Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
terrorist fist jab
I've always had a hell of time trying to write about teaching and kids. It's easy to slip into sentimental schmaltz, and equally possible to feel like I'm exploiting or belittling kids or portraying them unfairly or sending damaging messages about them...there are just a lot of pitfalls, I find. With that said...
The Teen Center is what I’ve talked about all summer when people ask questions that make me feel idle. I phrase it as if I had more ownership in the process than I really do—emotionally, I own it, but logistically, I’ve been an enthusiastic spectator at best. “What are you doing with all your free time?” “We’re opening a teen center—we’re going to paint it when I get back.” As if I were part of any meaningful “we” in the process. I wasn’t.
For the first three days of the painting, I stayed home. I had decent excuses—I hadn’t been formally informed of the location or the work hours, and I had left messages, I told myself. Truth is, I knew where the place was—I’d driven past it to check it out in my early enthusiasm—and it’s easy enough to drop by, wearing grubby clothes, and pick up a paintbrush. I was nervous, when it came down to it. Here’s a very close-knit group of 15 or so kids and their 2 or 3 mentors, and though I’ve been on the periphery of their work for a couple of years—in the audience at their open mics, teaching at a school that one of them attends, only that single kid, Kareem, even knew who I was. I hate being on the periphery of something so good—wondering if they see me, if they wonder who I am and why I’m so interested in what they’re doing, fearing that they’ll see me as some creepy adult who skulks about their projects. So I stayed home for the first three days, waiting to be held accountable for my promise to help by somebody other than my conscience.
On Thursday, I forced myself to go in around noon. I knew Natalie, the adult mentor who was working with them, and was relieved to have her show me around. The place looked great: they’d painted a couple of rooms and had 4 or 5 left to tackle, and they were into it: painting, dancing, laughing, looking like a postcard of student investment. It would’ve been a dream come true if I hadn’t been so self-conscious. I knew most of these kids by face—I could tell you about their poetry after a year of monthly open mics—but they clearly had no idea who I was. Most of them didn’t make eye contact at all, being too busy with the painting (or dancing), and those who did were polite in the way I’ve learned kids are when they’re casing an adult—not sure whether I was trustworthy, whether I had power over them and whether I would use it to hold them back, whether they would ever see me again. I might’ve been a supervisor, a senator’s aide, a local reporter, a safety inspector, a well-meaning but clueless small time philanthropist. I knew more than I probably should have known about their foibles and their personal dramas from their poetry and irrationally, it hurt that they were so coolly cordial and formal when I tried to break the ice. It hurt, even though it was exactly right, exactly what they should do, exactly what anybody would do.
Being socially awkward to begin with, this awkward situation would have terrified me if I hadn’t had a job to pour myself into. After a few hours of work, the adults began to crack the jokes that I’ve become accustomed to: “Shoot! Take a break, wouldya? This woman’s working like she wants a promotion” and the well-meaning but humiliating compliments: “Boy, this girl’s a hard worker. Kids, you need to take a lesson from her.” I try to make jokes with the kids, who respond by saying, “huh?” This always happens, and I can never figure out whether it’s my northern accent, my tendency to mumble when I’m being sarcastic, or the fact that my sense of humor is totally at odds with theirs (aka I'm old). I tell Erica that she should paint a pole with a candy-cane stripe and get “huh?” I tell James that his paint-spattered face is a good look for him, and he says, “huh?” There’s nothing worse than being forced to repeat a lame joke, nothing that can make a person want more to curl up and disappear. Worst-case scenario, I’ll just paint my ass off for a few days and then forget about the whole thing. But I want to know these kids. I want to be involved in this thing, I want to be a part of it, I want to help them make this happen, I believe in this, and in them, so strongly that it would make them uncomfortable if they knew.
I cracked lame jokes with Kareem, hoping he wouldn’t be embarrassed to be talked to by the weird adult in the room. Being as gracious and big-hearted as he is, that probably never occurred to him. On the second day, Sarah started asking me impertinent questions, much to my relief. Having taught hhigh school for five years, I had become really good at giving evasive answers that were always good for a laugh. At least I could show her that I wasn’t uncomfortable with her—well, I was uncomfortable, but not for the reasons I was expected to be. We talked about the color of my prom dress if I were still allowed to go to prom and she said I was crazy. I think one of the things that has me hooked on working with kids this age is the feeling of first getting a smile out of them. You have to work your butt off and be incredibly patient with most kids in order to get them to set aside their cool veneer and crack a smile, but when it finally happens, you feel a momentary triumph that’s incomparable. The beginning of the school year has always been my best time of year for that very reason: I’m on top of my game as I navigate the thin line between laying down the law and coaxing out a genuine, non-sarcastic or mocking, smile.
Before teaching, I wanted to be involved with kids somehow. I tried volunteering a couple of times, but after one awkward day of being left out on the periphery with barely any eye contact from the kids I was working with, I’d quit. I didn’t realize that it was a process that took time and effort, or that this is as it should be. I also didn’t realize that the kids that make you work hardest for it are the ones that will rock your world and make strained weeks seem like small change for such a phenomenal reward.
On the third day, Diana shows up. She’s clearly an old soul, a wise and soft spoken and immensely powerful young woman whom the other kids, whether overtly or not, look to a lot. To be cliché about it: a quiet leader. She’s incredibly polite, and very reserved, and very charismatic. She says, “Excuse me” a lot, in the place where most kids would just yell out your name to get your attention. She doesn’t call people by their name, something I can identify with—for a long time, and still with people who are older than me, it sometimes feels like I’m being overly familiar to call people by their name. More accurately, it would feel overly familiar to call them by their first name, and overly formal to call them by their last, so I resort to things like “excuse me.” She’s also the girl that seems to know exactly how much playing is okay: she’ll mess with her friends and then stop at the exact moment when an adult might think about reprimanding her. She’s the girl that hangs out towards the back of the room, and when I ask for someone to paint the bathrooms or collect paintbrushes that need to be cleaned, gives other people a chance to volunteer. After a pause long enough to determine that no one wants to do it, she steps up and quietly volunteers—I don’t know if she realizes that this will prompt the rest of the group to volunteer more willingly to do whatever I ask them to do next, but it does. They don’t do what I ask them to do—I still have to stay for an extra half an hour rinsing out paintbrushes—but they do volunteer to do it. That’s a step. Sarah decides to paint a little; this is the first time I’ve seen her do much in the way of work, and Kat points it out to me. “No way. Sarah, I love you!” pops out of my mouth, which I would normally never say for fear of making a kid feel awkward (or, being honest, embarrassing myself). “I love you too, Ms. Laura. Now get over here and help me.”
Also on the third day, Aisha, a girl who writes incredible poems, was upset. I knew very well that she didn’t want to talk to me (the weird adult) about it, but I couldn’t let her stand there without saying something. We went through the routine of me asking if she was okay and her being as polite as it’s possible to be when you’re pissed off and the wrong person is trying to comfort you, and I left it alone. I feel like the outcome of this kind of interaction could go one of two ways: either she’ll make a mental note that I care and will warm up to me later, or she’ll tell her friends that I’m trying to get in her business and that I’m creepy. Much as I dread the latter, I know that I’d never forgive an adult who knew I was upset and didn’t try to help me out when I was her age, so I have to take the risk.
Fourth day: The adult who's supposed to be in charge is MIA, again. She hasn’t come back, in fact, since leaving minutes after I showed up on my first day. I realize I’m supposed to be supervising but am totally ineffective at it. I let the kids know, sort of, what needs to be done and then let them do what they choose to do. Some work, some don't. It irritates me more each day that this happens, and that Natalie isn’t here to be the bad cop, but I know that taskmaster/teacher mode would be totally contrary to the spirit of this place, so my only tool is the occasional sarcastic cracks. Besides, the fact is that, in between long breaks to argue about whose school is best and fight over the last bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, the work is somehow getting done. Erica, in whom I’d confided on day two that I didn’t have a clue about painting, seems to be following me around. She works next to me all morning and has started laughing at my stupid jokes; she’s even countering my pointless anecdotes about my childhood with pointless anecdotes about her own. Nice. She and Trina are jokingly pole-dancing on the pole they’d painted a couple of days ago. As I walk by, genuinely embarrassed, I shield my eyes and they laugh. I let slip that I finished the Harry Potter book the day before and Trina tells me to shut up. “Oh—I’m so sorry—I didn’t meant to say that—I just meant—don’t tell me what happens!” It feels good to laugh at her; she’s embarrassed. It feels good not to be the only one who’s embarrassed. She goes on to tell me the three parts that have made her cry so far. I feel relief when I find myself wishing that she’d stop talking to me so much so we could get back to work. I hold up a paintbrush in the direction of a few kids eating chips. Sarah leaps up and says, “I got it. For you, Ms. Laura. You’re my girl. She’s my girl. I got it.”
No way.
The bus comes and takes most of the kids home at 4:30. I’m annoyed at having to wash the brushes, yet again. I’m even more annoyed when a group of five more kids emerge from their upstairs slacking-off room at 5:00, just as I’m ready to leave. Now I have to wait until they all get picked up. James is taking Diana and Sarah, but Aisha is still waiting for her mom, and I’m pissed off that she didn’t get on the bus. Instead, she’s calling her mom, her sister, her little brother, her uncle, her mom again, her sister again, trying to arrange to be picked up. I’m mad that she doesn’t get that I can’t go home after my long day until she gets off safely. “You can go,” she says.
“No, I can’t.” I counter. “Tomorrow, you need to get on the bus, got it?”
I know she just rolled her eyes. I can feel it through the back of my head.
We wait; James and the girls keep Aisha company so she won’t be left alone and awkward with an adult.
“You know, I can give you a ride, Aisha.” I say. She demures. She doesn’t want me to go out of my way. I can tell she wants to just get home and wouldn’t mind riding with me, and this emboldens me. I feel stupid that it took me half an hour to figure out that she just needed me to offer, that her mom wasn’t really “on her way.” “Come on. Call your mom and tell her you’ve got a ride. Let’s get out of here. I’m tired.”
I think—but I could be wrong—that she’s immensely relieved. We’ve solved the problem and we’re gone. As I walk out the door, Diana adjusts her bags to free up a hand. I can tell she’s going to shake my hand goodbye. She gets the wrong hand free, and after a moment of indecision, she puts her fist out to me. I tap it with mine.
The Teen Center is what I’ve talked about all summer when people ask questions that make me feel idle. I phrase it as if I had more ownership in the process than I really do—emotionally, I own it, but logistically, I’ve been an enthusiastic spectator at best. “What are you doing with all your free time?” “We’re opening a teen center—we’re going to paint it when I get back.” As if I were part of any meaningful “we” in the process. I wasn’t.
For the first three days of the painting, I stayed home. I had decent excuses—I hadn’t been formally informed of the location or the work hours, and I had left messages, I told myself. Truth is, I knew where the place was—I’d driven past it to check it out in my early enthusiasm—and it’s easy enough to drop by, wearing grubby clothes, and pick up a paintbrush. I was nervous, when it came down to it. Here’s a very close-knit group of 15 or so kids and their 2 or 3 mentors, and though I’ve been on the periphery of their work for a couple of years—in the audience at their open mics, teaching at a school that one of them attends, only that single kid, Kareem, even knew who I was. I hate being on the periphery of something so good—wondering if they see me, if they wonder who I am and why I’m so interested in what they’re doing, fearing that they’ll see me as some creepy adult who skulks about their projects. So I stayed home for the first three days, waiting to be held accountable for my promise to help by somebody other than my conscience.
On Thursday, I forced myself to go in around noon. I knew Natalie, the adult mentor who was working with them, and was relieved to have her show me around. The place looked great: they’d painted a couple of rooms and had 4 or 5 left to tackle, and they were into it: painting, dancing, laughing, looking like a postcard of student investment. It would’ve been a dream come true if I hadn’t been so self-conscious. I knew most of these kids by face—I could tell you about their poetry after a year of monthly open mics—but they clearly had no idea who I was. Most of them didn’t make eye contact at all, being too busy with the painting (or dancing), and those who did were polite in the way I’ve learned kids are when they’re casing an adult—not sure whether I was trustworthy, whether I had power over them and whether I would use it to hold them back, whether they would ever see me again. I might’ve been a supervisor, a senator’s aide, a local reporter, a safety inspector, a well-meaning but clueless small time philanthropist. I knew more than I probably should have known about their foibles and their personal dramas from their poetry and irrationally, it hurt that they were so coolly cordial and formal when I tried to break the ice. It hurt, even though it was exactly right, exactly what they should do, exactly what anybody would do.
Being socially awkward to begin with, this awkward situation would have terrified me if I hadn’t had a job to pour myself into. After a few hours of work, the adults began to crack the jokes that I’ve become accustomed to: “Shoot! Take a break, wouldya? This woman’s working like she wants a promotion” and the well-meaning but humiliating compliments: “Boy, this girl’s a hard worker. Kids, you need to take a lesson from her.” I try to make jokes with the kids, who respond by saying, “huh?” This always happens, and I can never figure out whether it’s my northern accent, my tendency to mumble when I’m being sarcastic, or the fact that my sense of humor is totally at odds with theirs (aka I'm old). I tell Erica that she should paint a pole with a candy-cane stripe and get “huh?” I tell James that his paint-spattered face is a good look for him, and he says, “huh?” There’s nothing worse than being forced to repeat a lame joke, nothing that can make a person want more to curl up and disappear. Worst-case scenario, I’ll just paint my ass off for a few days and then forget about the whole thing. But I want to know these kids. I want to be involved in this thing, I want to be a part of it, I want to help them make this happen, I believe in this, and in them, so strongly that it would make them uncomfortable if they knew.
I cracked lame jokes with Kareem, hoping he wouldn’t be embarrassed to be talked to by the weird adult in the room. Being as gracious and big-hearted as he is, that probably never occurred to him. On the second day, Sarah started asking me impertinent questions, much to my relief. Having taught hhigh school for five years, I had become really good at giving evasive answers that were always good for a laugh. At least I could show her that I wasn’t uncomfortable with her—well, I was uncomfortable, but not for the reasons I was expected to be. We talked about the color of my prom dress if I were still allowed to go to prom and she said I was crazy. I think one of the things that has me hooked on working with kids this age is the feeling of first getting a smile out of them. You have to work your butt off and be incredibly patient with most kids in order to get them to set aside their cool veneer and crack a smile, but when it finally happens, you feel a momentary triumph that’s incomparable. The beginning of the school year has always been my best time of year for that very reason: I’m on top of my game as I navigate the thin line between laying down the law and coaxing out a genuine, non-sarcastic or mocking, smile.
Before teaching, I wanted to be involved with kids somehow. I tried volunteering a couple of times, but after one awkward day of being left out on the periphery with barely any eye contact from the kids I was working with, I’d quit. I didn’t realize that it was a process that took time and effort, or that this is as it should be. I also didn’t realize that the kids that make you work hardest for it are the ones that will rock your world and make strained weeks seem like small change for such a phenomenal reward.
On the third day, Diana shows up. She’s clearly an old soul, a wise and soft spoken and immensely powerful young woman whom the other kids, whether overtly or not, look to a lot. To be cliché about it: a quiet leader. She’s incredibly polite, and very reserved, and very charismatic. She says, “Excuse me” a lot, in the place where most kids would just yell out your name to get your attention. She doesn’t call people by their name, something I can identify with—for a long time, and still with people who are older than me, it sometimes feels like I’m being overly familiar to call people by their name. More accurately, it would feel overly familiar to call them by their first name, and overly formal to call them by their last, so I resort to things like “excuse me.” She’s also the girl that seems to know exactly how much playing is okay: she’ll mess with her friends and then stop at the exact moment when an adult might think about reprimanding her. She’s the girl that hangs out towards the back of the room, and when I ask for someone to paint the bathrooms or collect paintbrushes that need to be cleaned, gives other people a chance to volunteer. After a pause long enough to determine that no one wants to do it, she steps up and quietly volunteers—I don’t know if she realizes that this will prompt the rest of the group to volunteer more willingly to do whatever I ask them to do next, but it does. They don’t do what I ask them to do—I still have to stay for an extra half an hour rinsing out paintbrushes—but they do volunteer to do it. That’s a step. Sarah decides to paint a little; this is the first time I’ve seen her do much in the way of work, and Kat points it out to me. “No way. Sarah, I love you!” pops out of my mouth, which I would normally never say for fear of making a kid feel awkward (or, being honest, embarrassing myself). “I love you too, Ms. Laura. Now get over here and help me.”
Also on the third day, Aisha, a girl who writes incredible poems, was upset. I knew very well that she didn’t want to talk to me (the weird adult) about it, but I couldn’t let her stand there without saying something. We went through the routine of me asking if she was okay and her being as polite as it’s possible to be when you’re pissed off and the wrong person is trying to comfort you, and I left it alone. I feel like the outcome of this kind of interaction could go one of two ways: either she’ll make a mental note that I care and will warm up to me later, or she’ll tell her friends that I’m trying to get in her business and that I’m creepy. Much as I dread the latter, I know that I’d never forgive an adult who knew I was upset and didn’t try to help me out when I was her age, so I have to take the risk.
Fourth day: The adult who's supposed to be in charge is MIA, again. She hasn’t come back, in fact, since leaving minutes after I showed up on my first day. I realize I’m supposed to be supervising but am totally ineffective at it. I let the kids know, sort of, what needs to be done and then let them do what they choose to do. Some work, some don't. It irritates me more each day that this happens, and that Natalie isn’t here to be the bad cop, but I know that taskmaster/teacher mode would be totally contrary to the spirit of this place, so my only tool is the occasional sarcastic cracks. Besides, the fact is that, in between long breaks to argue about whose school is best and fight over the last bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, the work is somehow getting done. Erica, in whom I’d confided on day two that I didn’t have a clue about painting, seems to be following me around. She works next to me all morning and has started laughing at my stupid jokes; she’s even countering my pointless anecdotes about my childhood with pointless anecdotes about her own. Nice. She and Trina are jokingly pole-dancing on the pole they’d painted a couple of days ago. As I walk by, genuinely embarrassed, I shield my eyes and they laugh. I let slip that I finished the Harry Potter book the day before and Trina tells me to shut up. “Oh—I’m so sorry—I didn’t meant to say that—I just meant—don’t tell me what happens!” It feels good to laugh at her; she’s embarrassed. It feels good not to be the only one who’s embarrassed. She goes on to tell me the three parts that have made her cry so far. I feel relief when I find myself wishing that she’d stop talking to me so much so we could get back to work. I hold up a paintbrush in the direction of a few kids eating chips. Sarah leaps up and says, “I got it. For you, Ms. Laura. You’re my girl. She’s my girl. I got it.”
No way.
The bus comes and takes most of the kids home at 4:30. I’m annoyed at having to wash the brushes, yet again. I’m even more annoyed when a group of five more kids emerge from their upstairs slacking-off room at 5:00, just as I’m ready to leave. Now I have to wait until they all get picked up. James is taking Diana and Sarah, but Aisha is still waiting for her mom, and I’m pissed off that she didn’t get on the bus. Instead, she’s calling her mom, her sister, her little brother, her uncle, her mom again, her sister again, trying to arrange to be picked up. I’m mad that she doesn’t get that I can’t go home after my long day until she gets off safely. “You can go,” she says.
“No, I can’t.” I counter. “Tomorrow, you need to get on the bus, got it?”
I know she just rolled her eyes. I can feel it through the back of my head.
We wait; James and the girls keep Aisha company so she won’t be left alone and awkward with an adult.
“You know, I can give you a ride, Aisha.” I say. She demures. She doesn’t want me to go out of my way. I can tell she wants to just get home and wouldn’t mind riding with me, and this emboldens me. I feel stupid that it took me half an hour to figure out that she just needed me to offer, that her mom wasn’t really “on her way.” “Come on. Call your mom and tell her you’ve got a ride. Let’s get out of here. I’m tired.”
I think—but I could be wrong—that she’s immensely relieved. We’ve solved the problem and we’re gone. As I walk out the door, Diana adjusts her bags to free up a hand. I can tell she’s going to shake my hand goodbye. She gets the wrong hand free, and after a moment of indecision, she puts her fist out to me. I tap it with mine.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
other people's kids
I don't mind waiting in long lines, because it allows me to engage in one of my favorite hobbies. Eavesdropping isn't as simple as listening in to any nearby private conversation, any more than hunting is shooting whatever organism your gun is pointed at. Applying the skills of aural voyeurism to the average conversation is the equivalent of shooting a tree. A true sportsman is more discriminating than that, setting out with a particular type of prey in mind. For my part, the conversations I relish are between a young kid and an adult who is not his or her parent. I savor the lopsidedness in which such conversations are steeped: the more comfortable one party is (say, the overbearing, booming-voiced auntie using sentences far too complex for her 5-year old companion), the more uncomfortable the other one becomes (5-year-old watching the floor in case an escape hatch opens while executing subtle but complex slow-motion dance moves).
It takes close listening and sharp deductive reasoning skills to figure out when you have such a situation in the checkout line with you. The most common clues include a woman saying something to the child about "your mother." This alone isn't a dead giveaway, as plenty of children have two mommies, and even more have crazy mommies who speak of themselves in third person.
After just moments in line at the bookstore the other day, my skills were rewarded with conclusive evidence that the adult and child behind me were not related. It seemed that mom was somewhere else in the store (self-help? fantasy?); this lady must have, seeing a gleam in her friend's eye that signalled a desperate need to be alone for a few moments, volunteered to take the little girl to pay for her picture book. The kid was happily chattering; she was clearly the comfortable one in this situation. She pointed to the lady's bracelets and said, "pretty."
"Thank you! Can you count them?"
"One...two...three..." and so on, carefully and deliberately, but flawlessly, to nine.
"That's a lot of bracelets on my wrist, huh?"
The girl pointed to a display of drinking games near the checkout: Beer-opoly, etc.
"A game! Oooh. I want that game! Please? Please?"
I don't know if the rest of the line was listening as closely as I was, or if they were, whether they, too, smiled to think of the mother's mortification upon hearing her daughter beg this lady to buy her something, much less a drinking game.
"No, honey. That's a...an adult...well, that's a beer game."
The child was squirming, maybe even hopping a little bit. "But I like beer games! I love beer games! Please!"
It was pretty funny in the moment. It made me think of how irrational we humans get in the face of strong desire; how in a moment of want, nothing matters outside of the thing that you covet. Logic, truth, and dignity fade away. I wondered whether we outgrow that urge or just refine our methods, replacing hopping up and down with more artful strategems such as pick-up lines and blackmail.
Maybe the chance to return to that childhood impulse is part of the pleasure of Mardi Gras bead-whoring: that single-minded desire for beads that causes people to shed clothing for strangers. While I've never personally uncovered any important parts of my body, I have pleaded, kissed strangers, called people "gorgeous" who weren't, and I've certainly jumped up and down and screamed until the bead-thrower couldn't ignore me any more. It's fun for a couple of hours. Still, it must get exhausting for kids to spend years that way, constantly in the grips of such a powerfully desperate longing for every shiny object onto which their gaze happens to fall.
The lady had to stifle a laugh and then backtrack, re-explain. Still failing to change the kid's mind, I watched her think up and halfheartedly articulate ten different reasons why that particular game was not an appropriate object of desire for someone too young to count nine bracelets without effort. Her logic was flailing for a foothold in this totally illogical argument, all because she was afraid, or unable, to give that firm and definite "no" that mothers have mastered. She just couldn't produce the kind of "no" that rules out any further need for explanation (some moms might add, "Because I said so;" mine usually finished with "Period. End of report"). If I were this lady, I'd be praying that there would be a sudden rush for the Beer-opoly games, frenzied customers snatching them from the shelf. That way, I'd be able to use the only phrase I'd ever used to successfully deny a child something: the inarguably terminal "all gone."
For my lack of ability to deliver that powerful "no," I've dragged a two-year old on a giant stuffed orca through her house for what seemed like hours, past the point at which my knees were buckling and my vertebrae fusing, stifling cries of agony as she didn't supress squeals of glee that seemed to mock my pain. I couldn't formulate a sound argument for "again!" despite employing every rhetorical strategy I could summon. "One more time," I gasped between back spasms. The child echoed, signalling agreement with my terms. "One more time! One more time!" Lulled into a false sense of impending relief, and wanting to make the last orca-ride a memorable one, I'd pull with extra vigor, or take a new route around the coffee table. In doing so, I sealed my fate: the gleeful cry of "again!" lacked any recognition that it was clearly in violation of our agreement.
"But...but..."
"Again! Again!"
"Okay, ONE more time?"
"One more time!"
I knew that, somehow, I had to get the orca out from under the kid and out of her sight, but the sleight of hand to pull that off was way beyond my grasp. It might come down to this: I would have to destroy the orca, all at once, rendering it unrideable before the inevitable screams of protest could stop me. Somehow, though, I had to unsheath my only rhetorical weapon. But "all gone" wouldn't work until this cursed stuffed animal was actually all gone, and it was made of quality materials: it could last for thousands of trips. It was likely to outlast my back by a long shot, and it had already left my belief in free will in its cuddly wake. Mastery of my fate? All gone.
It takes close listening and sharp deductive reasoning skills to figure out when you have such a situation in the checkout line with you. The most common clues include a woman saying something to the child about "your mother." This alone isn't a dead giveaway, as plenty of children have two mommies, and even more have crazy mommies who speak of themselves in third person.
After just moments in line at the bookstore the other day, my skills were rewarded with conclusive evidence that the adult and child behind me were not related. It seemed that mom was somewhere else in the store (self-help? fantasy?); this lady must have, seeing a gleam in her friend's eye that signalled a desperate need to be alone for a few moments, volunteered to take the little girl to pay for her picture book. The kid was happily chattering; she was clearly the comfortable one in this situation. She pointed to the lady's bracelets and said, "pretty."
"Thank you! Can you count them?"
"One...two...three..." and so on, carefully and deliberately, but flawlessly, to nine.
"That's a lot of bracelets on my wrist, huh?"
The girl pointed to a display of drinking games near the checkout: Beer-opoly, etc.
"A game! Oooh. I want that game! Please? Please?"
I don't know if the rest of the line was listening as closely as I was, or if they were, whether they, too, smiled to think of the mother's mortification upon hearing her daughter beg this lady to buy her something, much less a drinking game.
"No, honey. That's a...an adult...well, that's a beer game."
The child was squirming, maybe even hopping a little bit. "But I like beer games! I love beer games! Please!"
It was pretty funny in the moment. It made me think of how irrational we humans get in the face of strong desire; how in a moment of want, nothing matters outside of the thing that you covet. Logic, truth, and dignity fade away. I wondered whether we outgrow that urge or just refine our methods, replacing hopping up and down with more artful strategems such as pick-up lines and blackmail.
Maybe the chance to return to that childhood impulse is part of the pleasure of Mardi Gras bead-whoring: that single-minded desire for beads that causes people to shed clothing for strangers. While I've never personally uncovered any important parts of my body, I have pleaded, kissed strangers, called people "gorgeous" who weren't, and I've certainly jumped up and down and screamed until the bead-thrower couldn't ignore me any more. It's fun for a couple of hours. Still, it must get exhausting for kids to spend years that way, constantly in the grips of such a powerfully desperate longing for every shiny object onto which their gaze happens to fall.
The lady had to stifle a laugh and then backtrack, re-explain. Still failing to change the kid's mind, I watched her think up and halfheartedly articulate ten different reasons why that particular game was not an appropriate object of desire for someone too young to count nine bracelets without effort. Her logic was flailing for a foothold in this totally illogical argument, all because she was afraid, or unable, to give that firm and definite "no" that mothers have mastered. She just couldn't produce the kind of "no" that rules out any further need for explanation (some moms might add, "Because I said so;" mine usually finished with "Period. End of report"). If I were this lady, I'd be praying that there would be a sudden rush for the Beer-opoly games, frenzied customers snatching them from the shelf. That way, I'd be able to use the only phrase I'd ever used to successfully deny a child something: the inarguably terminal "all gone."
For my lack of ability to deliver that powerful "no," I've dragged a two-year old on a giant stuffed orca through her house for what seemed like hours, past the point at which my knees were buckling and my vertebrae fusing, stifling cries of agony as she didn't supress squeals of glee that seemed to mock my pain. I couldn't formulate a sound argument for "again!" despite employing every rhetorical strategy I could summon. "One more time," I gasped between back spasms. The child echoed, signalling agreement with my terms. "One more time! One more time!" Lulled into a false sense of impending relief, and wanting to make the last orca-ride a memorable one, I'd pull with extra vigor, or take a new route around the coffee table. In doing so, I sealed my fate: the gleeful cry of "again!" lacked any recognition that it was clearly in violation of our agreement.
"But...but..."
"Again! Again!"
"Okay, ONE more time?"
"One more time!"
I knew that, somehow, I had to get the orca out from under the kid and out of her sight, but the sleight of hand to pull that off was way beyond my grasp. It might come down to this: I would have to destroy the orca, all at once, rendering it unrideable before the inevitable screams of protest could stop me. Somehow, though, I had to unsheath my only rhetorical weapon. But "all gone" wouldn't work until this cursed stuffed animal was actually all gone, and it was made of quality materials: it could last for thousands of trips. It was likely to outlast my back by a long shot, and it had already left my belief in free will in its cuddly wake. Mastery of my fate? All gone.
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