Family and Other Natural Disasters

An 80% chance of rain?
Christmas came early!

If you live in Central Texas, you know we had an outbreak of severe weather last weekend. Normally, rain is such a rare occurrence that a late afternoon sprinkle that wouldn't be thought serious enough to cancel an outdoor wedding in other parts of the state brings the city (and traffic) to a halt and a Christmas morning-like glee to our local weather reporters, who would otherwise be stuck spending the afternoon buried in a thesaurus, trying to come up with new words for 'hot' and 'dry.'

However, on Sunday we had the third tornado warning I can recall in my years in the Austin area. The first was many years ago, and I remember shuffling down the stairs at work to the basement with several floors worth of coworkers at a rate of a stair a minute and then promptly turning around and shuffling up the stairs at the same rate because by then the storm had passed, like some sort of anxious and dispirited slug oozing through a tunnel.

"Look, either it skips over us and nobody
ever has to know, or it plows through
the building and we save a crap ton in
lapsed salary...either way, it's a win!"

The second also happened while I was at work. My boss at the time was also involved in buildings and disasters and such and he told me later that by the time the tornado warning moved through the bureaucracy, it was too late to do anything about it so they decided not to tell us. I remember people milling around in confusion because their phones were telling them we were in danger but the building alarms (which are very good about notifying us of Serious Disasters like overcooked popcorn) were strangely silent on the subject of tornadoes. Of course, that particular boss was more truth-ish than truth-ful, so perhaps it didn't go down quite like that.

So, Sunday morning, I was in the bedroom, making my grocery list. Mother was in the living room, on her tablet. The children were in their respective lairs, and the cats were sleeping (duh). Then the cell phone cacophony begins. Mother and I check our phones, go, "Huh. Weather," and go back to doing what we were doing before. The cats don't have cell phones because they would spend all their time texting poo emojis, blowing up my phone demanding early dinners, and ordering Kitty Crack on Amazon. Bob would probably exceed his data limit on ESPN, given his predilection for kicking things and Daisy would spend all of her time on Internet self-help forums.

Eleanor and Bruce, however, do have phones and, as young Austinites, have no memory of actual weather. They both came running into my room, somewhere between OMG! and WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! I explained that this was a warning for the whole county, and the odds that a tornado would actually carry us to Oz or even to the backyard were pretty slim, but that the National Weather Service issues a warning because tornadoes are so unpredictable. My son looked at me, then at the two windows, and said, "So, WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN HERE?" And, in a rare moment of sibling unity usually reserved for the advisability of dessert, his sister agreed.

This Tornado Warning is brought to
you by "Bridge Over Troubled Water."

So Bruce called Betty and they invaded Eleanor's room, which, as the converted garage, has no windows and plenty of comfy seating. I summoned Mother, because, I figured that, if I had to succumb to cell phone-induced panic, I was taking her with me. She immediately retaliated by playing a record of my 1985 summer band camp performance, followed by Simon and Garfunkel's greatest hits. Daisy, our calico cat, ran into the room and hid under a chair--not, probably, because of some innate cat-sense of impending weather, but because Daisy's main life goals are (1) food, (2) affection, and (3) hiding, and Eleanor's room is the Holy Grail of Hiding because the door is usually closed. Bob, being completely lacking in survival skills, was still sleeping on his perch by the back window, and I had to go grab him at the insistence of the kids. And there we all remained, for half an hour, until the warning expired and Eleanor evicted us, which may not have happened in exactly that order.

So how did Mother and I become so nonchalant about Nature's Fury? Well, it all started in 1980. We lived on ten acres of land outside of Sinton, Texas, roughly 30 miles west of Corpus Christi. That September, Hurricane Allen came barreling towards Corpus Christi as a Category 5. For those who are not life-long Gulf Coast residents, here's a quick summary of hurricane categories:

• Category 1: A Good Rain ("We needed it!"--the mandatory Texas response to any rain, sort of like "Amen" for weather) + A Day Off Work/School
• Category 2: Put Away the Gnomes and Patio Furniture
• Category 3: You'll Probably Lose That Half-Rotten Tree, Your Patio Cover, and Some Fence Boards
• Category 4: Board Up the Windows and Stock Up on PB&J (Plywood, Bleach, and Jugs of Water)
• Category 5: RUN FOR YOUR LIVES--WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

Patience (n)-- (1) A boat that survived a Category 5
hurricane anchored in the middle of a harbor. (2) a
quality Mom was completely lacking in by the time
Dad returned to Sinton after protecting said boat.

So, when Allen was a Category 5 and showing no signs of weakening, panic ensued, at least for normal people. I think we have previously established that my father was not normal. Although we technically had a half hour head start on Corpus Christi evacuees, we were delayed by Dad's pre-evacuation checklist. This consisted of: (1) securing his welding shop, and (2) securing his boat. I am assuming (3) was securing the safety of his loving family, but we'll never know because he never made it that far. (1) was easily managed, given that the shop was a large, metal building; however, (2) involved an elaborate (though successful) plot to protect his sailboat by sailing it into the middle of Corpus Christi harbor, dropping four anchors off the side, and rowing back to shore. If you're curious, three anchors broke but one held, and all the normal people who lashed their boats to the dock came back to find their boats (and the dock) smashed to toothpicks. So, from a boat protection standpoint, this was an awesome plan. From a get-your-family-to-safety standpoint, however, it was somewhat lacking.

By the time he got back to Sinton, the hurricane was already on shore, so there was no chance of us heading out of town. In fact, we barely had time to make it to the local Red Cross shelter, situated in the Sinton High School gymnasium. I don't remember much of the shelter, other than wall-to-wall people and clamoring noise from both inside and outside the building. In this situation, a normal family would have figured, "Oh well, the hurricane is upon us. Guess we'll make the best of it. Because only crazy people would leave a hurricane shelter in the middle of a freaking hurricane." I think you know where this is going.

Looks like a fabulous time to fire up the grill!

My father looked around at the mayhem of a packed shelter, uttered some profanity, and got in his truck and drove back to our house, in the middle of an actual squall. Mother, ever prudent, waited until the eye was overhead before driving us home in the car. My most vivid memory of living through a Category 5 hurricane was not the howling winds or booming thunder or even the otherworldly stillness of the eye passing overhead. It was pulling into the driveway to see my father at the barbecue pit, trying to grill a roast before the eye passed. In this particular endeavor, he failed, due to obvious problems with kindling, the random gusts of the wind stirring up during the eye, and the general thickness of roast. The attempt was spectacular and the failure epic.

*I.e., this little fish pond, the dirt from
which raised our house and provided a
convenient slope for all the water to roll
downhill and flood everyone else's house.

Ultimately, of course, we survived. The house withstood the storm without even a drop of water inside, for various reasons that subsequently became a source of contention with the neighbors.* Nevertheless, it is the sort of experience that alters your perception of 'bad weather' pretty much forever. After you've driven through a Category 4 hurricane and witnessed a man prioritize sailboat security and the salvaging of perishable meats above trivial things like personal and family safety, it is pretty hard to get worked up over a mere tornado warning, even with a half dozen cell phones and tablets squawking and screeching over the "Sounds of Silence."

Zumvolley: The Dance Sensation Sweeping the Gymansium

The best part about picture day?
No buzzers!

Betty, my third grader, likes to play basketball. She takes a laid back attitude towards sports in general, and early on in her basketball career at the YMCA, she discovered that you really don't have to move outside the circle in the middle of the court because, eventually, everybody just runs back and forth anyway. This was an excellent way of conserving energy; while everyone else was working up a sweat running, Betty spent the better part of a season strolling casually from one side of the circle to the other before her father finally threatened to take her out of the league if she didn't actually attempt to play basketball.

One area of her game she always focused on with laser intensity was the scoreboard. Not because she wanted to win (they didn't keep score that young), but so that, when the clock was in danger of running down to zero, she could immediately stop drifting around the circle and put both hands over her ears before the buzzer sounded. She really hates loud noises.

Anyway, once we convinced her to leave the Magic Circle and get within a few feet of the basket, she discovered that she had a natural advantage on both defense and offense, being about a foot taller than any other player and even scored some points.

This tragedy could have
been prevented by simply
running away from the ball.

Regrettably, basketball is not a spring sport in the youth leagues, so this spring Betty is trying volleyball at our local community center. Eleanor played volleyball, so I am an experienced Volleyball Mom, and I can tell you that, even in the best of circumstances, 3rd/4th Grade Volleyball is tragically entertaining. Balls fly EVERYWHERE. True, a simple serve can go across the net and land in-bounds, but this rarely happens. Sometimes the ball hits the rafters at the top of the ceiling. Sometimes it lands on the other court. Often it lands in the bleachers (Pro Tip: Never, ever, ever look at your cell phone while watching an elementary volleyball game. In this case, being a spectator is NOT a spectator sport.)  Frequently, it flies backwards over the server's head. Periodically it sails through the doorway and out the gym. On the rare occasions when it arrives at the opposite side of the net, the girls on the other side do the logical thing that any sane person would do when a ball comes flying at their face: they duck. Sometimes, they run away, usually plowing into the girls next to them. Sometimes the ball will land splat in the middle of the court because every single girl on the team has seen it coming and backed away. The winner of an elementary school volleyball game is usually whichever team lands the most serves in-bounds, because no sane girl returns a serve (on purpose). This can take as long as a regular game because somebody has to chase all the balls and also nobody ever knows when to rotate so the umpire is continually rotating and unrotating and rerotating the teams.

O.M.G.!!! Totes adorbs!
SQEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Betty's team is called The Pandas, because of course that's what is going to happen when you ask a bunch of nine- and ten-year-old girls to name their own sports team. They rehearse on Monday nights at the community center gymnasium. In the sort of brilliantly horrible scheduling only possible at a busy and diverse small community center, the Pandas have Court 1B, while Court 1A is used by a small but very energetic Zumba class. To be perfectly clear, a single gymnasium contains, at the same time, a combination of Latin dance performed by a small group of game but rhythm-deprived middle-aged women (fortunately, the buff male instructor has enough rhythm, shimmy, sashay, and even twerking for all of them) with a very robust sound system and ten 3rd and 4th grade girls with the attention span, energy level, and generally high pitched squealing of a group of overly caffeinated squirrels in a helium factory. The results take tragically entertaining to an almost mythical level, the level of Zumvolley.

The Zumba class gets to slide and spin around flying volleyballs, adding a new level to their workout, but not, alas, enhancing their coordination or ability to locate the beat. The Pandas get their very own dance track. There was spontaneous dancing breaking out all over that court. Even with three coaches, any time a coach got distracted by coaching (it happens, although it happens at their peril with nine-year-olds), two or three random Pandas would break out of volleyball formation and take on an entirely different kind of formation, eyes glued to the Zumba instructor, taken by the rhythm. Even when they managed to face the correct direction (the other side of the net; it is surprising how often this has to be said), at any given time, half the team was doing some sort of more or less random dance move. Volleyball has never seen so much twirling. As a spectator, it was frankly mesmerizing, sort of like being on the freeway and seeing the debris from a wreck between a live poultry truck and a Jello pudding truck, except that you don't have to pretend to not rubberneck because you're in the bleachers. The biggest danger to a spectator was getting distracted by the Zumba end of the wreck and getting pounded in the head by a stray volleyball. Even Eleanor (a teenager) put away her phone because nothing on Netflix was as exciting as Zumvolley.

Sadly, Zumba ended half an hour before volleyball, and the dancers dragged themselves out of the gym in exhaustion (except for the instructor, who had barely broken a sweat and appeared to be trying not to skip). The Pandas actually played worse without the music and spontaneous dancing. It was like the little disco lights in their souls had gone out. If they lose the first game, we may have to petition the community center to get out the speaker so the girls can get their Zumvolley on.

The Best Defense is an Ex-Con Named Jim

You know what it's like, 3 a.m., and you're lying there, dreaming the impossible dream of actually dreaming, trying to trick yourself into slumber, and your brain starts tossing random memories at you just for fun, and you figure you might as well relive a few because it's not like you're actually going to fall asleep anyway with the Needy Cat (who has magically sensed you're awake and unlikely to move) laying on your chest, pawing at you desperately for attention? Or maybe that's just me; it's probably best not to be presumptuous. I'm told that some people can go entire years without being sat on by desperate house cats at 3 a.m.

Probably a fair representation of
my mental card catalog at 3 a.m.

Anyway, while petting the Needy Cat, my brain went back into the Junior High section of the mental card catalog (filed between "Inner Circles of Hell" and "Just Kill Me Now") and pulled out this little treasure. For most of us, even those without Needy Cats, many of the Junior High cards are perfect for 3 a.m. review, because they're stained in embarrassment, smeared liberally with social failure, and tinted the pale greenish hue of cringe. In a random act of kindness, however, my brain selected the story of How I Learned Self-Defense.

The experts are all very, very clear on the art of self-defense. Don't make yourself a target. Be aware of your surroundings. Wear sensible shoes. Make a lot of noise. Run away. Fight if you have to, but concentrate on making yourself a challenging target. Buy some pepper spray. Trust your instincts. Get security to walk you to your car.

The experts never met my father. (If they had, they would have likely implemented all of their own advice. He was kind of a scary dude.)

Portraits in Extreme Awkwardness:
A Stone Cold Clarinetist,
Circa 1983

So, let's set the scene. I'm twelve years old, staying with my dad for the summer in South Texas. Tall for my age, frizzy spiral perm. I am not athletic. I am so not athletic that when my mother tried to corner Coach Bailey in 7th grade to see about getting me into basketball, the coach talked her out of it by saying that some people are just not meant to play competitive sports, probably the first and only time in recorded history that a coach has tried to talk someone out of physical activity. I am the nerdy kid who bikes into town to the library to check out stacks of murder mysteries every week and practices the clarinet for hours. My lifetime record in flex arm hang is .0009 seconds and on a good day, I can do at least ten push-ups, as long as you let me keep my knees on the ground. Sarah Connor I am not.

One day, I was reading another Agatha Christie novel in the office of my dad's welding company, Universal Fabricators. He called me outside and introduced me to Jim, who was either a client or a drinking buddy, or possibly both. I'm not entirely sure I want to know how they knew each other, frankly. It is perhaps a comfort that Craig's List didn't exist in the 80's.

Anyway, Dad pointed out that, as a young woman, I might at some point need to defend myself from overly fresh dates. So, logically, he found Jim, who had fortunately been recently released from prison for an unspecified violent offence, to teach me to defend myself from frisky suitors, rapists, or what have you.

Kind of like this book, except without
the unnecessary three letters
in front of the word"violence"

There we were, on the concrete parking lot of Universal Fabricators in July, ready for a one-hour, hands-on mini-class. Both of my instructors were clearly of the opinion that the best defense was a good offense. We started with a brief review of soft tissues and how to pull, twist, and pound them (Lesson 1: Inflicting Pain on Your Handsy Date). Next, we looked at joints and how to make them bend in ways they were never intended to (Lesson 2: No Means Do-It-Again-And-I-Maim-You). There was a lengthy digression into the face, and how difficult it is to continue aggressively groping your date after she has gouged out your eyeballs and smashed in your nose (Lesson 3: You Should Probably Stop Making Out and Call an Ambulance and Also Pick Up Your Eyeballs Before the Cat Gets Them). The final lesson was entirely theoretical, because both of my instructors acknowledged that, regrettably, as a preteen girl, I was unlikely to ever actually produce enough force to kill a man, but, being thorough, they instructed me in the technique (Lesson 4: Hello, Jail!), just in case I should ever bulk up and have a date who was undeterred by his aching groin, broken knees, and missing eyeballs, and I had enough adrenaline and/or murderous rage to go Uma Thurman on him. I would imagine these lessons would have also served me well in prison, had I ever actually used them.

What amazes me most about this particular memory is that at the time, it did not seem all that odd that my father had found a violent criminal to teach his preteen daughter how to kill a man. This is either a reflection on either my father's level of crazy or my own tolerance for "odd."

Needless to say, I've never had cause to use any of the valuable instructional content in that long-ago lesson. The only overly frisky date I had suffered a firm hand removal, followed by a swift and decisive telephone break-up, followed by a couple of really awkward months of being ignored in Calculus, and that was pretty much the end of it. I have teen and preteen daughters, and I don't plan to put an ad on Craig's List ("Wanted: Scary ex-con to teach the use of force to minors, must produce proof of violent criminal record"). I'm fairly sure most of that lesson has faded into oblivion (besides the part about the eyeballs, which was too disturbing to forget).

Nevertheless, at 3 a.m., my brain can still pull out that file from the card catalog and convince me that, should the need arise, I may somehow still have the knowledge to kill a man, despite being completely unable to deter a fifteen pound Needy Cat...which is at least a more empowering memory than most in the Junior High section.

Go ahead and try to move me, I dare you!

Art, Soul, Nazis and Unicorn Poop

The ex and his brother used to spend hours debating philosophical matters. I remember one debate in particular went on for months in the late 90's--do clones have souls? As it turns out, there's a novel for that, ironically, a novel set in the late 90's. Cloning was a hot topic in the late 90's, thanks to Dolly the Sheep, who was cloned in 1996 (and named after Dolly Parton, per Wikipedia, because...she was cloned from a mammary gland cell, which I did not remember hearing on the news at the time, hopefully because the scientists in question were embarrassed).

Last week, I (finally) read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, and it is one of those that you find yourself coming back to, over and over, in the shower, while driving, or in the middle of a particularly boring meeting. The tight first person narration locks you inside the mind a narrator, Kathy, whose voice is incredibly restrained, whether because she has been carefully conditioned to accept the terms of her life...or whether she is truly somehow different than we.

Kathy and her peers are part of an experimental program (the nature of the experiment would constitute a major spoiler), a key component of which involves art, because as even the most genetically engineered human in this novel can tell you, creating and appreciating cultural artifacts (art, literature, music, etc.) is what defines and distinguishes us, if not biologically, then spiritually. If clones can make and appreciate art, the logic goes, then they must have souls. And in pursuit of Proof of Soul, the guardians in the program create a culture where not being creative is a sign of deepest failure and shame.

If you think about it, "real" humans are almost the opposite. Creativity and artistic ability are seen as exceptional, something that only a few are gifted with. We get critical with our artistic efforts, compare them to masterpieces, and, when they fall short, put them away and tell people, "I'm just not that creative." I've read that pre-teens go through a phase where they find their own drawings not realistic enough and most will stop even trying. I remember reading a post-technology novel about a world where people, without iPods full of Adele and Beyonce, became less self-conscious and more willing to sing and make music. So, art being a sign of having a soul for a clone is a really interesting idea, given that so many "real" people are afraid to express that which acknowledges their souls.

For the world Ishiguro sets up, the premise that producing art signals a the presence of a soul, while necessary for the creators of said experimental program to secure funding, ultimately leads to the end of the program because if clones have souls, the casual inhumanity of raising them to be organ donors is out in the open and if there's one thing we humans can't tolerate, it's for our casual inhumanity to be on display. (The bit about them being organ donors is not much of a spoiler, as the narrator is pretty clear about it from the first page...it is a fact of her life, in fact it is the purpose of her life. Unlike the rest of us, who have to muddle on with love and doing our best and trying to make a difference, somehow the clones actually do have a very clear purpose, which, after reading this book, makes me much happier with trying to make a difference, somehow as an answer to the meaning of life. I'm also somewhat partial to 42.)

No, unicorn poop is not,
unfortunately, metaphorical.

Unfortunately, the casual inhumanity of humanity is all too real, and always has been. At lunch the other day, Betty was celebrating her recent acquisition of unicorn poop by singing "unicorn poop, unicorn poop, UNICORN POOP" in the restaurant, often loudly, and Eleanor eventually got tired of it and brought us down out of the magical rainbow tinted skies by informing us that the Nazis made pillows from the hair of the Jews they slaughtered.*** While we were all disturbed, Eleanor, who had been clearly pondering this for a while, was also confused: if Nazis were so revolted by Jews, why would they sleep with their remains?

The answer being, for the same reason the society of Ishiguro's "science fiction" novel can raise children in the most humane and cultured way and then slaughter them for their organs: the casual inhumanity that happens when we mark another person as "other" and equate "other" as "less than." It is the same casual inhumanity that leads to burning mosques, murder in bars, physical violence to queer youth and a thousand other similar acts throughout history.

One recurring motif in the book is the revulsion the "true" humans feel for the clones. They are "other" and they are "less than" and even, the book hints, they are so "other" that they could be a physical threat to the lives of "real" humans. In the March 2 edition of "On Being," Pádraig Ó Tuama describes the work he and others are doing in Northern Ireland to bring people together after centuries of conflict. The conflict is so ingrained that even the words a person uses to refer to the area (Northern Ireland or the North of Ireland) signal which side of the conflict that person is on. He describes the full range of conflict from "You're different. I'm different" to "In order for me to be right, it is important that I believe that you are wrong" all the way to "You're demonic." When a person's feelings move towards the other being demonic or evil, then all sorts of acts that would be absolutely unacceptable to do to one's own group now become possible, or even morally necessary, to do to the "other." Even if one never commits such an act, the cognitive dissonance in which we knowingly agree to not know the act has happened is only possible when at some level we see the victims of the act as other, as expressed beautifully by Anne McCrady in her poem "Dust on the Tongue." Like the society of Ishiguro's novel or McCrady's poem, it is easier and safer to count our differences (or to ignore troublesome facts altogether) than to think about them.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a book that lingers, nagging and tugging on the easy complacency we shield ourselves with. It is a beautifully written book, with restraint and compassion in every sentence. I highly recommend it.

Betty highly recommends Unicorn Poop.

***It should be noted that this was my mother's 81st birthday lunch, and she in no way deserves a birthday lunch full of Nazis and unicorn poop. We are very sorry; we do not know how to behave in public.

Small Talk at the Tea Party of the Surreal

Nana bought her plastic food.
For her birthday.
And she liked it.

Much of child's play, no matter how inventive, is rooted in realism, a heaping serving of practice-for-adulthood garnished with the silliness-of-childhood to make a sort of magical realism. Moms who use their kitchen to microwave popcorn buy their children play kitchens, filled with play food that the children play cook while their parents heat up a frozen pizza. Parents who shudder in boredom and horror at an invitation to a fancy restaurant snap pictures of their children's fancy tea parties, where people who normally drink water from a Smokey Mo's plastic cup sip Kool-Aid from delicate china cups.

The whimsical and the surreal mingle with the mundane: your daughter may play in her play kitchen, but produce a pickle and cheese sandwich with the lettuce on top. Teddy bears bedecked in more accessories than your average bingo hall crowd get Kool-Aid splashed on their paws by a five-year-old in a licensed Cinderella dress whose wand keeps getting caught in her plastic tiara.

I wasn't an entirely normal kid, but much of my play was firmly grounded in magical realism. Despite having a robust collection of Barbies and stuffed animals, I was determined to put our pet rabbits in the dollhouse, even though they refused to stay posed. I also went through a phase of pretending I was a dog and crawling around on the floor on my hands and knees. Green Milk Bones were the best, as I recall. I once followed the dogs around for a whole day, taking notes.

Eleanor, as my eldest child, took her play as seriously as she has taken everything else in life. There were rules, dear Lord, there were rules. There were the rules, the exceptions and exemptions and qualifications to the rules, and the rules to follow when the exceptions and exemptions were contradicted by the qualifications. When Eleanor invented a game, it was a sure bet that both siblings would wander off in boredom during the Reading of the Rules, before the game actually started, and, in fact, the Reading of the Rules generally lasted longer than the game itself. She once designed an Exercising School for her siblings with a seven-day revolving schedule and a signed contract. Then had a tantrum when they wouldn't sign it.

The proper attire for your big sister's tea party.
Just look at the enthusiasm!

Bruce, too, was grounded in realism, being the extremely concrete child that he is. As a preschooler, he decided to dress up as an owl. Paper feathers, boas, or just pretend were not good enough, not real enough. No, he got naked and taped real feathers all over his body. I'm a little surprised he didn't try jumping off the roof. Being easy going, he often allowed Eleanor to coerce convince him into playing her games.

Betty, however, has never been content with realism, even the magical kind. Her imaginary landscape is firmly in the land of the surreal. She had two friends (Ava and Lola) for six months before any of us realized they were imaginary. Despite having a bin full of Barbie clothes, her Barbies were always naked, generally with very short hair, and often missing a limb or two (likely as a result of accidents occurring when their clothes or hair were removed). To Bruce's horror, they were usually found in the bathtub. If he ever visits a therapist, the first childhood trauma he will relive is going to take a shower and being confronted with a tub full of naked, dismembered Barbies with bad hair, sort of like the climax of a really bad horror movie set in a sorority house. Just last weekend, she produced an abstract musical play ballet that, as best we can tell, involved faeries, of varying numbers, jumping, and some sort of sleeping sickness.

Abraham Lincoln, who may actually have
been 6'1" in that hat.

Which brings us to the ultimate Tea Party of the Surreal: the Third Grade Biographical Research Project, which was a Very Betty Event. Each student had to present their subject, in costume, and respond to questions from the audience--all in the first person. Betty had a beard and a suit and a stovepipe hat and was introduced to the class, not as Betty, but as The Sixteenth President of the United States. It was the ultimate dress-up. Her best friend, Albert Einstein, was quite fidgety, perhaps because s/he went first and had a burst of nervous energy to release. Bill Gates asked Helen Keller, without irony, how she died, and she confessed she didn't know. How-did-you-die, it turns out, is a popular question, along with its corollary, Are-you-still-alive, also asked completely without irony. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell did not remember how she died, but could tell you confidently and without irony that she did and that she was born in England. Bill Gates related his criminal record (speeding and driving without a license) and wanted to know if Helen Keller knew where her grave was. Thomas Edison really needed a drink of water but had to try to sit still while Albert Einstein explained that her/his favorite equation was E=mc2. Abraham Lincoln was able to correctly state that s/he had moved to Indiana as a youth (s/he had said India in rehearsals, putting an entirely new spin on history), and s/he was able to articulate with gusto the details of his/her assassination by Wicksbooth when questioned but wasn't sure how long it had taken him/her to die.

For an hour, the dead and the living mingled on blue plastic chairs, asking each other personal questions, while tugging on homemade costumes. Each delivered their three-minute, three-index card Spoon River soliloquy, while proud mammas and grandmas sat in the back row, iPhones up and recording. The only thing missing was a set of tiny china cups and a box of cookies.

Because the Sofa Might Eat Us

Or, The Logic of Fear

Dogs, I've often thought, are us as we'd like to be, our ideal selves. They approach the world with eagerness and a spirit of adventure, and they approach others with loyalty and playfulness. A dog will go with you on any adventure, convinced that whatever's at the end of the car ride is going to be awesome, merely because you're taking him there, even if last time was the v-e-t.

Cats have trust issues. They remember that last trip to the v-e-t perfectly well and they definitely aren't fooled by spelling it out. They know that you are not trustworthy because of the multiple occasions when you didn't feed them until 6:35 a.m. instead of 6:30 a.m., when the empty spot in the center of the food bowl reached the size of the donut you were eating right in front of them while not filling it, when the Red Dot of Doom stopped before they indicated they were done chasing it. A cat is perfectly happy to have an adventure--on her own terms, under her own direction, and if she is in control of the adventure and can end it at any time by coming back inside and taking a nap.

In other words, cats (like most of us) adopt a certain suspicious attitude toward change.  Even the most welcome changes can bring that heightened sense of foreboding-tinged joy: this is awesome--when's it gonna start sucking? Unwelcome changes bring on full cattitude: not gonna, don't wanna sulking, an alphabetized list of 3,459 things that will go wrong or reasons why said change won't work, or even a teeth-bared, fangs-out attack on the Unwelcome Change and anyone who supports it.

I've had occasion to hear several people proclaim loudly and earnestly that they LOVE change, that they embrace it. These people, generally speaking, are lying. At least, I assume they're lying based on their flushed faces, raised voices, nervous twitching, and the plethora of anxious questions or speculations about whether and how the future is going to suck that tend to follow the declaration that they love change.

The thing is, it's okay to not be thrilled with change, especially at first. Because, our inner cat remembers all of the changes that haven't ended so well and has heard all of the media speculation and water cooler grumbling and anxious 3 a.m. self-talk that the Unwelcome Change was written into the Holy Books as a clear sign the End Times Are Nigh.

The Change Victims, aka Bob and Daisy

Which brings us to the sofa. We got some new living room furniture last weekend. This involved several changes that had a major impact on Bob and Daisy, our cats. The first change was removing the old sofa. We humans, being Management, had a big picture understanding of why the sofa needed to go. It was too low to the ground for Mother, it didn't fit the shape of the room, it attracted cat hair as though it were trying to reupholster itself, and the cushions not being attached meant that the cushions were always either piled on the floor or about to pile on the floor. It was an easy decision to make, and, after all, we are Management and get to decide things.

The Change Victims, as you might imagine, had a different perspective. They liked the old sofa. The non-attached pillows were soft and made a perfect place to take a nap. The arms were a nice fake leather that is oh-so-soothing to poke holes in with one's claws, and the low back made it easy to launch over during those occasions when one needs to tear through the house like a maniac for no particular reason. So, removing the old sofa was Not Okay.

Kitty Crack

Also, Management did not present the change in a particularly empowering way. Specifically, Management dumped some Kitty Crack in the middle of Bruce's bedroom and shut the door for a couple of hours and when the door was opened, the Unwelcome Change had happened. Friends, I tell you it was horrible. The old sofa was gone, just gone. There was an empty space. No cushy cushions. No clawing material. The Change Victims wandered around in the desert, meowing.

With time (approximately two hours), the Change Victims became sort of used to the Unwelcome Change. The cushy cushions were still gone, but having a ton of extra space in which to chase the Red Dot of Doom was a nice bonus. It was much easier to get to full speed before trying to run up the wall by the a/c closet. The Change Victims felt that maybe, just maybe, they might survive the Unwelcome Change.

Then, the next phase of the Unwelcome Change occurred: the delivery of the new furniture. Once again, Management dumped Kitty Crack in the middle of Bruce's room. While cats, in general, have excellent memories and the Change Victims probably knew at some level this was duplicitous, such is the nature of Kitty Crack that they couldn't help themselves. This time, when the door was opened, New Things were in the living room. New, dangerous things. Yes, it may look like a sofa, but, you never know, it could eat us.

Potentially Cat-Eating Sofa

Thus ensued hours of Cat Drama: ears back, fluffy tailed resistance to the invasion of comfortable furniture. Bob sat under the coffee table and stared intently at the recliner for ten minutes, waiting for it to make its move. When I sat down in it and popped up the foot rest, both cats bolted from the room. Because, you never know, it could've been booby trapped. A full 24 hours later, the sound still made Bob jump. What, you've never seen a La-Z-Boy spit poisoned darts? It could happen.

The first to embrace the Unwelcome Change was Daisy, who is older and wiser and really, really values cushy cushions because her primary activities are sleeping and sitting. (Management facilitated this acceptance by putting her favorite napping bed on the sofa. It is a proven fact that a sofa with a cat bed on it is rarely lethal.) Slowly, Bob, who is young and skittish, has come around, mainly because he is a climber and he can get several inches higher on the new furniture. Also, because the sofa hasn't eaten Daisy yet.

The old sofa is gone; the Unwelcome Change happened. Like many changes, the Change Victims didn't know why it had to happen and they didn't have control or agency regarding the Unwelcome Change. The new furniture is here. There are some things that are good about it, for sure, and not everything changed (there are still some excellent napping options, for instance...just different ones). But the past in all its glory has to be let go, set aside as a memory. The future may indeed suck; the sofa might grow fangs and eat us. It might, however, turn out to be pretty awesome, and while it might not be in our natures to truly embrace an Unwelcome Change, perhaps we can come to terms with it, accept that it has happened even if we fight to change the change, and, with enough time and openness, curl up and settle down into it, own it.

At least until it eats us.

One, As Yet Uneaten, Sleeping Cat

Dyslexic Abe Lincoln, Emo Chris Columbus, Bigot Thanksgiving, and the Filters We Put on History

I have learned much of history that I didn't know from my children. 

Emo Chris Columbus
Bruce, 3rd Grade

For instance, Christopher Columbus was a sad, little hipster man. Bruce taught me that one a few years ago via on of my most treasured Kid Art Masterpieces: Emo Chris Columbus. Just look at those sideburns. The right one might even be a man-bun, escaping from a hat that might once have been sharply befitting a ship's captain, but has, perhaps through ennui, slouched ironically into a sort of limp ferret. His eyes are round and full of tears. Perhaps, as a friend once suggested, he has the feels about that whole genocide thing. You can almost see him shrugging his shoulders: not that he wanted all that gold anyway, because Emo Chris is clearly not that kind of dude (his suit is definitely Salvation Army and might even be a rather threadbare velvet) but the fact that the gold wasn't there was just some sort of commentary on wealth and how it wasn't fairly distributed and also how advertising sucks.

Dyslexic Abe Lincoln
Betty, 3rd Grade

I also learned a bit about Abraham Lincoln this week, courtesy of Betty's third grade spring research project. He stored papers in his hat to keep them dry, which may explain why it looks a little rumpled and bulgy. He also may be a Twinkie, unless the white stripe is a vague tie or he got splinched in a very bad apparition accident. Also, I am more impressed than ever that he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, given his lack of arms. He also proves conclusively that Emo Chris is a wimp, because his sideburns are so masterful that they grow into his beard, forming a giant happy smile of facial hair. Take that, Emo Chris! You may have led the Spanish to North America, but you just got schooled on sideburns. Bam!

The most adorable thing about Honest Abe, however, is that he, like my beautiful daughter, appears to be seeing the world in a unique way. Note that Dyslexic Abe is standing in front of a intricately drawn--yet backwards--American flag. I told her he was just standing on the other side of it, but Betty insisted on redrawing it. Strangely enough, the version with the forward facing flag was less detailed, the stars becoming fuzzy dots swirled in a tangled blue net and the pole on the wrong side of the flag. I much prefer Dyslexic Abe, his smile is more genuine and kind. You can tell from the Charlie Brown arch to his eyebrows that he is happy to have freed the slaves and ended the war. He looks like a great guy to sit down with on the White House lawn and feed the birds. Arms are over-rated anyway.

I've learned a few historical facts from the kids' elementary school that were considerably less profound, we'll call them 'alternative facts.' The kids' father and I celebrated that November 2015 was the final year for Bigot Thanksgiving, which was becoming more cringey by the child. Bigot Thanksgiving is a frankly horrible Reader's Theater play that our school does every year with second graders. It was...unsettling...when Eleanor was in second grade. It was that kind of creepy-funny where you're embarrassed at that one time you chuckled during the performance when Bruce was in second grade. It was just wrong, wrong, DO YOU KNOW WHAT YEAR IT IS, ROUND ROCK???? wrong when Betty was in second grade.

Are you ready to enjoy Bigot Thanksgiving? Are you sure? Well, in this magical world, three girls are Pilgrim Women, three boys are Pilgrim Men, three girls are Indian Women (yes, of course they're called 'Indian'...this is Bigot Thanksgiving, silly!), three boys are Indian Men, there's the Preacher (a boy, all three times), and the remainder of the kids are Corn or Turkeys. The teacher reads a story of the First Bigot Thanksgiving, and when she says their character, the kids respond in what is presumed to be their character:

• Pilgrim Men: Bang! Bang! (Are we really equating masculinity with firearms in the second grade?)
• Pilgrim Women: <get ready for it....> Mercy me! (Complete with dramatic sigh and backward hand to the forehead, because, you know, women are such delicate, dramatic little creatures, particularly the ones who uproot from their home country, cross months of stormy seas and battle famine and unending labor in the wilderness. But yes, MERCY ME!)
• Indian Men: Big and brave! (Which is not, technically, something they would say, so much as an overgeneralized stereotype that seems to come out of a really cheesy Western, but, whatevs.)
• Indian Women: <there's no getting ready for this one, sorry> Shhhh! (Complete with finger to the lips, because, as we have seen on the Senate floor, the only good woman is a quiet one.)
• Preacher: Praise the Lord! (We'll just ignore the whole church-and-state thing, as well as the fact that the elementary school in question is quite diverse and many of the children are of other faiths. We'll also ignore the tendency to cast the preacher as a boy, mainly because I already wrote this particular school regarding their sexist end-of-year awards a long time ago.)
• Corn: Pop! Pop! (Did they seriously pop the corn at the first Thanksgiving? I am skeptical. And why corn? Before you suggest that they didn't want to embarrass a child by having them wear a potato hat, I'd like to point out that my middle child was Clyde the Dancing Cockroach in the end-of-year play. Child dignity is not necessarily a priority.)
• Turkeys: Gobble! Gobble! (Okay, fine, except that at the very end, everyone, including the corn and turkeys, says, "YUM! YUM!" all together, which has some rather disturbing cannibalistic overtones if you think about it too hard, which you tend to do by the third child.)

So there you have it, history in elementary school. Personally, I prefer Emo Chris, who is unafraid of his emotions and may have learned some valuable life lessons along the way, and Dyslexic Abe, smiling, warm, and unfazed by his backwards flag and lack of arms, to the starched white and saccharine identity boundaries of Bigot Thanksgiving. In the real world, we soldier on through difficulties and learn from our mistakes. In the real world, we are not defined by two-word labels. In the real world, women and people of color don't have to be silent. And that is something to be thankful for.