"They" are "We"

I started writing this a while ago. It was that day that I posted a couple of sentences about wanting to address something important but also wanting to give it the attention it deserved. Well I’ve worked on it a couple of times and never been satisfied.

But it keeps coming back to me because it is all around me.

This morning I realized that I was writing from my head and this is something in my heart. So…even though I’m pretty careful about what I disclose here, this is worth a little bit of soul-baring. If that makes you uncomfortable, I understand. Don’t read it.

I am struggling with mental illness – not my own – but with its existence and its impact on people about whom I care very deeply. I’ve heard it said time and time again that mental illness is a family disease and that is an unqualified TRUTH. Since my closest friends become my family, I feel a sort of referred pain in their suffering.

This is how I know I'm not a complete psychopath.

I was going to give you a lot of statistics and academic quotes about mental illness – and there are a multitude of them out there I could share. But they don’t express how I feel about it. 

I’m also not going to address mental illness as it relates to gun control or research funding or incarceration or health care costs or the stigma surrounding mental illness that doesn’t exist for physical ailments – although all of these things should absolutely be a priority PERIOD. But none of these things are related to how I feel about mental illness.

And that’s what I want to share…how I feel about it…and maybe if it’s how a lot of us feel about it (especially those of us who consider ourselves healthy) maybe then we can all figure out a way to address it with the energy and compassion that it deserves.

Before I tell you though, I want to talk about the "referred pain" that I mentioned earlier. Referred pain is something interesting that happens in the human body when one part is injured or ill, but the resulting pain is felt somewhere else.I don't understand how it happens -- it's probably neurological -- but it's real. Though the people in my life inhabit different physical bodies than I do, I consider us part of a greater body -- a human collective made up of all the people who I love and who have loved me. So when I say I feel "their" pain, it is also my pain -- referred from them because we are connected.

This will be somewhat clumsy. I'll admit feeling extremely limited by the language -- specifically pronouns -- when it comes to this subject. Talking about "their pain" and how I feel about "them" seems so inadequate. I don't want to separate myself from anyone who is battling mental illness because isolation and marginalization compounds all suffering. I'm going to use words like "their" and "them" mostly because I don't want to make anyone else's story about me which is the risk I run when I say "our" or "us."  But know that I do not consider myself separate by any means and please bare with me as I stumble though.

I feel heartbroken and scared and helpless that my loved ones -- that anyone -- must face this disease. These are the things I wish to say to them...

I feel heartbroken because you are and will continue to battle pain. I know with every fiber of my being that mental illness is a disease as much as Leukemia or Parkinson’s. I also know with the same certainty that while battling this illness, your body may remain strong (making your condition invisible to those around you) while your brain and all the chemistry that supports it is deteriorating just like T-cells fail someone with leukemia and neurons fail someone with Parkinson’s.

You are sick and I want you to get better. 

I feel scared because most mental illnesses are chronic. They require daily medication and/or management and it is a life-long commitment on your part and on the part of those in your support system. The rest of your life is a long time to always be wondering what tomorrow will bring. Yes, I know that we never know what tomorrow will bring, but loving someone with a mental illness intensifies my awareness of it. Endless uncertainty scares me. Not knowing when another episode is going to occur…or if it’s going to be one from which we can’t recover…frightens me.

I am scared to think I could lose you to this disease. 

I feel helpless because I am a fixer. There aren’t enough casseroles or offers to babysit or special trips or meaningful conversations that I can give you to make the boo-boo go away. I can’t cure your mental illness and – listen, because it’s important – you can't "fix it" either. There are medications you can take, situations you can learn to manage, therapies you can engage in, and people you can rely on, but we can’t fix it or make it go away. I know that you can’t just “pull yourself together” when chemicals are attacking your brain any more than you could pull yourself together if someone was attacking you with a switchblade. You can’t just will the 2^nd or 3^rd or 4^th medication that your doctor prescribes to be “the one” that will make you all better any more than a cancer patient can will their 2nd round of chemo to succeed where the first one failed. You can’t just shut off the voices in your head that tell you to take another hit or check out or give up completely. However much the rest of us might like to believe that it is possible to just banish your demons that easily, I know that you long for that possibility by a magnitude of 10,000. If you could…I believe that you would?

I feel helpless because even together we can't "fix it", we can only learn to trust and manage each day. 

Sometimes I just don’t know what to do with my heartache and fear and helplessness. I give some of it to prayer. I give some of it to running. I give some of it to less healthy activities too. And still I carry lots of it with me. Because…love.

Love isn’t always beautiful or romantic or cuddly or comforting. Love is sometimes cowering together in a foxhole…or crying together on a couch…or sitting through unrelenting, interminable silence – the kind of together-silence that screams I will not give up on you. Love is doing all of this and more with the clear knowledge that it may not be enough. And love is -- perhaps most of all -- freeing you from any responsibility to mitigate my heartache, fear, or helplessness. 

It's not my job to fix you and it's not your job to fix me -- all we can do is love each other unconditionally -- both of us unyoked by guilt, shame, or expectation -- while we figure out how to live each day together. Even when we are heartbroken, scared, and helpless.

I guess I just want to say to all of my people who battle demons every day that I hurt for you and with you – not in the same way, but in my own way, because I love you and it's the very best I have to give you. I also want to say to anyone who considers themselves mentally healthy but feels heartbroken or scared or helpless in the midst of a loved one's mental illness...maybe embracing these feelings is the pathway to recognizing that we are all beautifully broken, scared, and unfixable.

And maybe this oneness -- where there is no "them" but only "us" -- is what will restore us to health. 

I'm Still Here...And Grateful.

I was correct that last week’s swim meet would result in me missing a day of writing. (Or two) It wasn’t for lack of trying though. I actually sat down on Friday – after running 9 miles early in the morning on the heels of 6 miles the day before – with a post in mind, but my brain was on overdrive. It’s not something that I necessarily dislike – it’s energizing – but it’s not conducive to focusing on one thing and writing it down coherently. Nor does it promote sitting for long periods of time.

I did the same yesterday – sat down and started writing -- but then life got in the way. Well, not in the way…more like it rolled by and I had to jump on board. I needed to do things like finish work from the weekend and pick up kids from school and take them to swim practice and go to the grocery store. These are all things that I’m grateful to be able to do so it’s not fair to say they “got in the way.” They just happened.

Our swim meet this weekend was eventful. If I was to summarize it in one sentence, I would say that technology is our friend…until it’s not our friend. And that’s when it really helps to have humanoid friends.

As meet director, I am sort of in charge but not really. I mean, I’m volunteering for our kids’ swim team…the visiting coaches and the swimmers are our customers. The meet referee and our head coach make the determinations about things like format, event order, but the logistics are up to me and the rest of the parents and the coaching staff. We have to get it done and I have – thankfully – the best bunch of parents and coaches to rely upon in organizing this endeavor.

I was ahead of the game this time. This is my third year to be meet director and I felt pretty calm about everything being ready – volunteers in place, concessions and hospitality in very capable and enthusiastic hands, heat sheets ready on time, everything prepped for the swimmers, coaches, and parents who would be visiting from 9 other teams in the area. But I also had this underlying anxiety that if things felt ready, there was a chance that I had forgotten something huge.

The good news is that I hadn’t…the bad news is that no matter how ready things actually are, chaos is called chaos for a reason and your well-ordered event can still end up in disorder and confusion.  Now – as chaos goes, it was the best kind, because it was mostly invisible chaos. The kids swam, other than a late heat sheet for one of the boys’ events, we managed to keep things moving which is our goal.

The contingency plan for any meet in which the software goes haywire is -- get the kids through their races, capture the times in whatever manner you can, and fix all the problems later when everyone goes home.  Because at a swim meet – unlike in life – we can always fix the problems.

So, we had our own little “Rise of the Machines” revolt by our trusted meet management software which basically meant we had to rebuild a database by hand. Which we did. And then the evening session worked fine. And then the computers let us down again on Sunday morning.

Between that and all the usual issues (a couple of rude parents, a coach or two that is never satisfied with anything, a few parent volunteers who didn’t bother to show up), it was like a waterfall of sewage cascading over my shoulders all weekend. And all I could do with my partner in crime, Kim, (and the other people who stopped in with offers of liquor – which we declined – and chocolate – which we accepted) was just keep moving through it (with my mouth mostly closed) and hope that there would be a shower to clean off all the poop at the end.

And there was.

Now, it’s all a distant memory and…like childbirth…the pain is forgotten and I will totally subject myself to the possibility of it all happening again in January. Because the bottom line is that I enjoy it…even the chaos…and it is appreciated by others. I really can’t complain about getting to do something that I enjoy and having 99% of the people for whom I’m doing it, thank me for it. That seems like a dream job. Even if it is a volunteer gig.

Oh – and that 1% can suck it, because it is a volunteer job and we all did our best. And at the end of the day, we all have to remember that it is a swim meet. Yes, this is important to kids with goals – of making the cut for big meets or swimming in college – so we do our best to make sure the swimmer’s experience is our number 1 priority. But I will not lose any sleep over a parent not receiving notifications because their Meet Mobile app isn’t updating or a coach being disappointed over them running out of free chicken minis in the hospitality suite.

Yes those things really happen.

There were kids who swam their first meet this weekend…kids who broke a meet record…one who broke an 18-year old team record…and others who felt what it’s like to swim so hard that you can’t get out of the pool without help. I think being a part of the infrastructure that helped that happen is pretty awesome. And I could be really angry with the parent who thought was ok to berate and shove another parent who was working to keep the deck safe for swimmers and free of unauthorized personnel, but instead, I’ll just be sad for them…that they couldn’t keep it all in perspective.

Perspective is remembering that while we were inside the climate-controlled natatorium watching our kids swim, there were parents in Afghanistan searching in earthquake rubble for their children.

Perspective is remembering that while we were cheering for our kids as they swum in a (fairly) clean swimming pool, there were parents in Mexico huddling together with their children in fear of the storm surge from Hurricane Patricia.

Perspective is remembering that while we were celebrating the many victories of our healthy children this weekend, there are parents in Oklahoma grieving the loss of their two-year-old who will never learn to swim, or run, or play basketball, or the violin or anything else after being run down by an alleged drunk driver.

And I could go on.

So…despite the time infringement, the chaos, and the 1% who need a reality check, I will just look back on the last 4 days and see each of them for the gift they were. And I’ll let the rest just wash back into the sewer.

Where it will be waiting for me next time. 

Scenes!

When I was in college, I lived with 60-something other women in a sorority house. I am an only child so you can imagine how well I adapted to these living arrangements. I loved the people but there were just too damn many of them sometimes. 

The first year I lived there, my room (which I shared with 3 other people) was located right above the large, heavy, self-slamming exit door. Because of the location of my bed -- up against the same outside wall as this door – I did not require an alarm clock to wake me up.

Here’s why…

Our house was technically “off-campus” but it was actually only a few hundred yards off campus. Instead of driving up the hill to the area where many of us had our classes, we chose to use the University’s transit system – specifically, the Brown Bus.  We called it “the dookie” – I guess because it was brown and so is poop – and the women in our house who had 7:30 am classes had to be out the door by 7:00 if they were going to catch it and be on time for class.

Every morning, this was my 7:00 am wake-up call:

• Gwuf-gwuf-gwuf-gwuf-gwuf-gwuf-gwuf-gwuf-gwuf (that’s the onomatopoeia I’ve selected to represent the sound of Birkinstocks quickly clomping down carpeted stairs).
• YOU TAKIN’ THE DOOKIE? (Shouted in a thick Southern accent.)
• THUNK. (The sound of the push bar on a heavy metal door being forcefully shoved open)
• BLAM!!! (That’s the slam.)

I have a comical visual of one of my roommates acting this out at one of our chapter business meetings in an attempt to entertain her way to some relief from this startling interruption to her sleep each morning (she didn’t have classes until much later). It failed. I mean…the entertainment didn’t fail, but it didn’t convince anyone to stop it. This is mostly because people with 7:30 classes are resentful of people who don’t have class until 11:00 so why are they going to protect their sleep?

There were times that living with a bunch of girls was fun. One example was on Wednesday evenings at 7pm when we all (well… 25 -30 of us) gathered in the TV room to watch Beverly Hills 90120 (the original…the best). After an hour of reveling in the poorly-written, lazily acted and directed melodrama, we anxiously awaiting the scenes from the next episode. We would all yell “SCENES!” in unison. Incidentally, the 30-second preview was always more interesting than the hour-long show would prove to be. Our excitement about what was next – the expectancy – was always greater than our enjoyment of the actual episode.

I still become giddy with anticipation about “scenes from our next episode” for the shows I watch now and I am pissed when they don’t have any. It feels like a personal slight. Which is why sometimes at the end of a blog post, I mention what I’m going to write or talk about the next day. It’s a gimmick that bloggers use to encourage people to come back the next day.

Yeah, I’m going to stop doing that.

First of all, what I think I’m going to want to talk about tomorrow is almost never what I want to write about when I actually arrive at tomorrow -- which happens to be the case today. And I don't want to be forced to live in the past. 

Secondly, if you know what's coming tomorrow and you eagerly anticipate it's awesomeness then I'm setting all of us up for disappointment. Because there is no guarantees in life -- about our own awesomeness or that of others.

Since I did this yesterday, I have two choices today. I can either write about what I said I would write about so that I remain true to my audience…or I can write about whatever I want and be true to myself. I guess if I’m going to be an artist, being true to myself is really important but I appreciate the people who are reading this – and providing feedback – because it’s helping me hone my craft and that’s valuable to me.

And this is all about me, right?

So I’ve come up with a compromise to satisfy both the need to resolve my final cliffhanger ending from yesterday (just in case someone was really looking forward to it) and the need for me to exercise some artistic freedom.

I’m going to do both…probably badly.

First, here is a list of times when I would feel completely justified in hovering over my children:

• If he or she had special need that I felt were not being addressed – or worse, causing them to be discriminated against -- I would become a school’s worst nightmare.
• If my child were hurting him or herself or abusing drugs or alcohol, I’ll be all over it like white on rice.
• If my kids started getting into trouble all the time – or if they had sudden behavior changes. Because that would likely be a sign of the above-mentioned issues.
• And now I hover and interfere and micromanage technology and social media because I don’t think kids are equipped to do this alone. I mean, they know how to use it, but they just can’t grasp the impact that it has. Their still-not-fully-formed brains make it impossible for them to use foresight in their decision-making process. They don’t know what constitutes “too much”. They don’t even know how much time they’re spending on it. And I know I can’t protect them from every situation outside our home, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a predator or bully threaten them virtually inside my home. So, to the extent I can maintain control in the vast, borderless arena of the Interwebs, I’m going to do it. And I’m going to talk them to death about it so that they hear my voice in their heads every time they hit “send” or “post” or “submit” or whatever.

Thwap-thwap-thwap-thwap (that’s the sound of my substantial helicopter rotors hovering over their technology.)

But onto more important things…

I want to talk about my refrigerator because I cleaned it out yesterday and I actually woke up feeling like the whole world was a better place for it.

I don’t perform this task often – certainly not as often as most “good” adults would think necessary. Don’t misunderstand…we throw things away periodically – like the fermenting fruits and vegetables that end up at the bottom of the crisper or the once-yellow cheese that has transformed into a stunning lump of algae-colored blues and greens. When I’m running low on Tupperware (which I recognize when the lids have no watching containers and vice versa), I’ll usually go in and dump stuff that’s been pushed to the back or has become indistinguishable from Play-dough.

But the all-out clean-out usually only happens after we’ve had a days-long power outage and the decision to purge is made by the power company and my nose. The only exception to this is the time my friend had her daughter hide a gargoyle in my refrigerator when she came over to babysit. One day, she (my friend) asked me – quite randomly – how often I clean out my refrigerator. I said I hadn’t really thought about it…probably not enough. And then I thought to myself, hardly ever. So I went home to clean it.

And that’s how I found the gargoyle. It had been in there for two weeks – tucked in behind a bottle of champagne that we had had since before we got married in 1999. So that’s what we’re dealing with – someone whose fridge is so jammed full of stuff that she doesn’t notice a GARGOYLE. Or that the champagne is in a different spot.

This is what it looked like when I was finished

This is the photo I took for the gargoyle gifter.

Yesterday, I cleaned out my fridge just for fun and I learned some things that I’ll share:

• My husband doesn’t ever eat the other half of the steak he saves “to put on a salad the next day.”
• Brisket sauce sticks to plastic like black dog hair sticks to white pants. So does barbecue sauce, ketchup, hot sauce, jelly, and anything else you put in the refrigerator door shelves that aren’t removable.  
• Real food spoils and fake food doesn’t – macaroni and cheese is the perfect example. The box stuff, though not necessarily edible, still looks just like it did when we stored it weeks (months) earlier. The stuff I made from scratch should have been sent to a lab for analysis. I think we invented something new there.
• Round Tupperware containers are the devil. They waste space. Also, they roll when they get knocked on their side. And if the lid isn’t on tight when they get knocked on their side, they spread their contents about very efficiently.
• Whoever invented refrigerator shelves with rims around the perimeter was a genius.

I learned more, but those revelations might cause you to turn me into the Health Department or Children and Family Services…so I’ll stop with those five.

Now for those of you who didn’t really read (or absorb) anything after the part where I said my friend hid a gargoyle in my refrigerator, well, you’ll just have to wonder about it for a while and know that it’s a good story…

That I might share…

At some point in the future…

But I’m not doing scenes from the next episode and we’ve already talked about why.

And since I haven’t even explained what the title of my blog means (to me), you know I’m operating on my own timeline.

And we’ll all be ok.

Because my refrigerator is clean. 

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Rotors

Yesterday I mentioned in passing that my kids’ grades were their responsibility. I stand by that. So allow me to tell you what that means to me.

• I don’t do my kids’ homework for them. It’s hard. And sometimes “helping” with homework is physically painful – tight chest, sharp pain in both temples, nausea. Most of those feelings are a result of the restraint I’m using to not just do it for them so it we can all go to bed.
• When I edit writing assignments at the teacher’s request, I don’t rewrite what they’ve written. I underline punctuation, grammar, and spelling errors. (The Oxford comma will live to see another day through my children.) We discuss what I’ve underlined and they make the corrections. And I only agree to edit something after they’ve edited it at least once themselves.
• I do not stay up all night the evening before a project is due to glue plastic figurines into shoeboxes, nor do I make midnight trips to Fedex/Kinkos to have papers professionally-bound. I have found that all (but one) of my kids projects have been assigned far enough in advance to be completed by them without scurrying around at the last minute. The only time I stepped in and broke my own rules was for a 6^th grade project assigned to my daughter which was college-level, completely ridiculous, and based upon a subject which had not been taught by the teacher. And after we turned in the project – I dealt with that situation (pretty much alone) so no one would ever have to deal with it again.
• I don’t check homework to make sure they’ve done it or for accuracy.
• I don’t pore over the emails from my kids’ teachers which outline the weekly syllabus.
• I don’t check their grades online. EVER. I receive a mid-term progress report and an end-of-term report card.
• I do not argue with teachers about grades or project rubrics (except for the one I mentioned) or homework – if my kids have a legitimate beef or question about something it is their job to ask their teacher for clarification or help. They must be able to communicate with other adults.

In short, going to school is their job. Any accountability for success should be theirs. I was once a student and being a student is how I learned to take responsibility for my work. I want to afford them that same opportunity to learn not just subject matter, but how to take care of business.

The following things are my job as the parent:

• Feed them the food they need to fuel their brains and bodies
• Provide them with study space and time to get their work done at home
• Procure school supplies
• Make sure they get enough sleep
• Signing permission slips
• Allow them free time to goof off
• Making sure they have clothes that fit – they are responsible for making sure they are clean.
• Support teachers and administrators (teacher appreciation, reasonable fundraising, conferences when necessary, class party assistance when appropriate)
• Make sure they know that although school is important, nothing they achieve there (grades, test scores, or awards) should determine their worth as a human being

The rest is up to them.

Now, I’m not judging those who do more. In my mind (and sometimes with my unfiltered mouth) I can be pretty critical of helicopter parents. I don’t understand the hovering and I have been guilty of speaking out against this thing that I don’t understand.

What I do understand, though, is that the cost of failure these days – of allowing our kids to fail so they can learn from it – seems like it’s significantly higher than it used to be and that may be why some parents feel the need to possibly overstep the boundaries of their role.

• Failing to qualify for the gifted program in 1^st grade puts you behind many of your peers from the age of 6. So it might seem reasonable to spend 5 hours a day reviewing popcorn words when they’re in preschool or introducing Algebra to a Kindergartener
• Failing to turn in a report or project on time could significantly impact a student’s grade which could in turn affect that student’s eligibility for a more rigorous college prep program. So it might seem reasonable to run around all night to help them finish on time – even if the urgency of the situation was the result of their own procrastination.
• Failing to adhere to a school’s social media policy could get a kid suspended for 3 days and the work missed can’t be made up. So it might seem reasonable to march up to the office and demand that your child be given special treatment because she didn’t really mean what she said. She’s a good kid and she was raised to know better.

Forget that all of these lessons speak louder and stronger than words could ever hope to. There is so much risk in failure.

And it’s not just failure for kids that comes with a high cost. For teachers, administrators, and schools, failure to demonstrate progress (standards for which are assigned by people who are not responsible for doing the educating) can mean being demoted, otherwise sanctioned, terminated or completely turned over to State governments or Charter School corporations. The pressure is enormous if they are going to maintain any autonomy. And this pressure gets passed down to our children from a very early age:

• Make straight A’s
• Behave perfectly
• Read above grade level
• Score in certain percentile on your standardized tests
• Get 10 hours of sleep a night
• Never be tardy for your first class at 7am – or any class
• Take the ACT when you 12
• Excel at a sport and a fine art
• Join every club
• Build your resume

Basically, do all of things that most adults haven’t achieved in a lifetime and do them before you go off to college. Well no wonder parents feel like they need to hover…our kids are being saddled with responsibilities that seem very adult-like. It’s only natural that we would want to help them out.

But are we really helping?

I love my kids and every challenge and victory, large or small, has been a gift in one way or another. With this in mind, I recognize that the overall challenge is teaching them how to not be helpless and/or entitled adults and the ultimate victory will be when they have left my house and can take care of themselves. 

The goal is independence.

When I do their work for them, I’m building an obstacle to achieving this goal. And what’s it going to get me?

• Someone who can’t communicate with the authority figures in their lives
• Someone who can’t take constructive criticism
• Someone who can’t complete a project in college or the workplace without help
• Someone who thinks that everything should be easily achieved without work or resistance
• Someone who can’t learn from their mistakes or failures
• Someone living in your basement as an adult

So I choose the risk instead. Give me B’s. Give me low grades or zeros on late assignments. Give me a hungry kid who left her lunch on the kitchen counter and didn’t want to eat the “gross” cafeteria lunch. Give me a kid who gets suspended for saying a curse word. Give me a kid who loses a 50 races, games, contests, scholarships, or awards on their own instead of a kid who wins them all because I did the work.

I need them to change my diapers one day and the only way they’ll be prepared to deal with my s*** is if they start learning now how to deal with their own. 

But just as the Bible and The Byrds say, to everything there is a season...and there are seasons and reasons to hover. I'll talk about where I love to interfere tomorrow.

Other People's Agendas

As promised I want to discuss email. Initially, I was going to talk about how irritating it is when people don’t read my very important emails to them, but after dealing with my own inbox this morning, I am reconsidering that angle.

I have a love-hate relationship with email. It has devolved over the last 20 years from something I loved for its convenience to something that I now loathe for its ubiquity.

My first email account was gifted to me as a freshman in college but I didn’t use it until my junior year and I only used it for two purposes:

-To chat with a high school friend of mine who went to college in another city and,

-To sign-up for a list serve. You remember those – list serves were pre-www social media. They connected people with similar interests and you could send emails to the list serve and have virtual discussions with other subscribers. The one I subscribed to was a discussion of the first amendment and it was moderated by my college advisor.

It WORE ME OUT.

A few times a week, I’d login to my email account at the law library so I could chat with my friend and I had to rifle through dozens of list serve emails that I didn’t care about. Let me clarify…I cared deeply about the First Amendment (and still do), I just didn’t care to read all the pseudo-academic-but-mostly-conclusory invectives about the First Amendment from every political science student and professor on or off campus who considered their opinion on Free Speech to be worthy of a dissertation-length email. The best thing I can say is that it this list serve probably saved a lot of trees because most of it would have been a giant waste of paper.

I suffered through this and never unsubscribed because, not knowing exactly how it worked, I was afraid it would alert my college advisor to my disinterest and I decided it was a bad idea to piss him off. Interestingly, my feeling about this list serve subscription foreshadowed my future (current) feelings about email in general, but as with many things, it was a gradual deterioration.

After college, email became the go-to method of long-distance communication for all of my people who were scattered about the country. Email was free -- for those of us with reasonable employers -- in a world where nothing was free. It was so much easier and faster to stay connected when I could quickly type a short note and it would instantly appear in someone's inbox. When i received a response, a notification would pop up on my work screen letting me know I had a new message. If I was expecting an email, I would check obsessively to see if one had come and I had missed the notification. In hindsight maybe our employers shouldn’t have been quite so reasonable. I’m positive that this switch-tasking caused productivity to suffer. But we were content so maybe this technology perk made up for the cost. The world may never know.

I looked forward to email like I had once looked forward to snail mail. Snail mail had become an irritant filled with direct mail marketing crap and bills – no fun at all – but email filled the void and there was exponentially more of it. I especially loved it once I began dating someone who lived 1000 miles away. The happy anticipation which accompanied each alerting ding increased by a factor of 10 once he came into the picture because every email could be from him.

This happy co-existence with email continued for years. As internet use increased, I used my email account to sign up for online shopping accounts which provided emails about sales. I signed up for informational emails and job postings and social announcements when I was working. After I moved and got married, I added subscriptions to daily digests from The Washington Post and New York Times. When I got pregnant, I subscribed to Babycenter and received weekly emails about what was going on inside my body throughout my pregnancy. I also received coupons for everything I could possibly need (and not need) to get ready for our baby. After my children were born, I had a group of moms in town who all stayed in touch via email helping each other with advice and support and scheduling playdates and meals for new moms.

Email was great and life was good.

And then technology turned on us. Soon there was texting. And instant messaging. And then social media. And smart phones. And suddenly email was just a nuisance. Almost overnight, my personal bubble was invaded and saturated with every sort of electronic transmission possible. Email was just another way that people could attempt to make their agenda my agenda and it was, by far, the most likely to encourage long-windedness.

Every email seemed like a treatise on the First Amendment.

All those informational emails, daily digests, and sale announcements that were so great once – became digital junk mail almost overnight. And because there was so much of everything I started to feel annoyed by even personal emails because there was just too much to sort through. I used to just delete all the stuff I didn’t have time for (which some days was everything) in bulk each morning when I woke up. When this became too time-consuming, I started indiscriminately unsubscribing from everything. But it seemed that as I unsubscribed from one thing, two new regular emails would appear daily in their place. It was endless work. Then I joined the DO NOT EMAIL list and the spam stopped…or at least it got chunked in some folder where I never had to see it.

For a short time, my inbox was manageable...and then my kids started Middle School. 

Middle School was like a lakes-worth of water being dumped on any smoldering love that may have remained in my heart for email. EVERY teacher sent us an email EVERY week – some sent multiple emails a week – one sent multiple emails a day. When my daughter started 6^th grade it was bad enough, but when I had both of them there, well…it actually made me cry one day. There was always the option to unsubscribe through the school’s communication system but, there were some communications that I needed to receive. I would estimate that about 1 out of every 100 emails required my attention, so I had a choice, (a) deal with the 99 that didn’t matter or (b) login to the school’s information system every day to make sure that I didn’t miss the 1 that did matter.

It’s like having to choose between being water-boarded and being burned with cigarettes.

The most aggravating aspect was that the vast majority of these emails were alerting us to things for which our kids were ultimately responsible -- things they were assigned in class. In the end, I chose to keep receiving these emails (so that I don’t miss the 100^th which is actually of relevance to me) but devised a genius method for making sure my kids had access to this information at home. I wasn't quite ready for them to have their own email accounts so I set up folders in my email account for them to check. The stuff for me stays in my inbox and the stuff for them goes in their folder. Problem solved.

But back to people who don't read my emails. I am endeavoring to manage antipathy and sympathy -- because it really irritates me, but I totally get it. Emails are like opinions...everyone has one to share and everyone thinks theirs is the most important. And now we receive reminder texts and automated phone calls too. There are just too many ways for people to get in contact with us and we are overconnected in all the bad ways and disconnected in all the meaningful ways.

And, once again, it’s all someone else’s agenda.

I guess what it comes down to is that we all have to make choices as to whose agenda will take priority at any given moment. We are thankfully free to do this, but it does mean being prepared to accept the consequences. Missed a volunteer opportunity that would have prevented me being fined or having to fund-raise later? Oops, I better be okay with shelling out some money. Missed the email detailing when my son’s project was due? And he turned it in late? I better be OK with his grades being his responsibility (which I ABSOLUTELY AM). Missed a Groupon for a massage? I’ll have to just rely on my foam roller I guess.

The good news is, with one kid in high school (where the incessant emails are a modest fraction of what they were in middle school), there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Between that, the daily unsubscribing to meaningless drivel, and my adamant refusal to subscribe to anything new, I have managed to reduce my incoming email to a manageable level. Now when important stuff arrives, I don’t feel resentful about having to read it and I haven't missed anything too vital. Yet.

Maybe someday email will become like a landline -- something we only use in an emergency. 

Word Vomit

The rabbit hole is so very deep today.

And it’s a little bit prickly – or I’m a little bit prickly – so the descent has been unpleasant.

Anyway, I’m not publishing what I just spent 2 hours writing…I’m going to publish whatever tumbles out of my brain during the next 30 minutes. I apologize if it’s rambling…but not really, because it’s my blog and I can write what I want.

Fall break is over. And now it’s the week before a swim meet. I’m going to quickly update you on things that went unwritten last week.

1. I have not done yoga every day. In fact, I have not done yoga even 10 times. It is safe to say that it has not become a habit…and may not ever. I sit in pigeon pose and put my legs up the wall after every run and I rest in child’s pose before bed many nights but there is no 30 minute yoga session every day. I’m sure it says something that I can’t be quiet or still or reflective – I can almost hear the penetrating questions…”Why do you suppose that is, Elise, that you don’t enjoy your own company more? What is it about the silence that frightens you so?” I will be ignoring all such questions or providing a completely unfiltered caustic response should one be directed at me. I will not be mincing words and they will cut you so beware.
2. I started 3 – THREE – different blog posts which I had to abandon because I just can’t think with Law & Order or NBA2K16 in the background. And when we turned those off…there was pacing. And grunting. And sighing. And bickering. Until I became the entertainment which means – you guessed it – me singing Whitney’s version of The Greatest Love of All as loud and off-key as I could manage. This sent them scattering to their rooms, but never long enough for me to formulate thoughts and put them on paper let alone edit and publish them. It was usually only enough time to do laundry or dishes. So at least that stuff is under control.
3. I have been religious about my running. It’s amazing how something that so many people see as a punishment is actually a form of therapy for me. My best runs last week were, in no particular order, (a) the one that made my heart feel like it was going to beat out of my chest and (b) the one that lasted an hour and a half during which almost stepped on a snake. 
4. I ate a whole bunch of sugar – well, a whole bunch for me. I ate a small bag of skittles and some sea salt caramel gelato and pancakes and couple of Jolly Ranchers. And I didn’t spiral into a sugar-binging frenzy so yay for that.
5. I didn’t get that job I interviewed for…twice. And it turns out that I’m really not upset about it. I actually am pleased to have met some really great people through the process. Any disappointment I feel stems from the realization that I really do want to go back to work but I don’t know what will be a good fit. I can’t describe the tension that exists between my confidence in my own abilities, and my resignation to the idea that I’m going to have start back at the beginning because I chose to sit out of the workforce for so long. It is clear to me that any volunteer work I’ve done – regardless of how intensive it may have been – will not carry the weight of a paying job in the eyes of a potential employer. So I guess I’m going to have to find a less-than-ideal job in an ideal organization so that I can build rapport and prove my abilities.

But not this week. This is a swim meet week and I am the Meet Director. This is one of those things that sounds better than it is. And it doesn’t sound that good. It’s one of those aforementioned intensive volunteer positions that no one values as job experience until they need me to do exactly what they want exactly when they want it…with a smile on my face and big thank you when I’m done. It feels like a job and I treat it like one because it’s important – to my kids and to their teammates. The only thing missing is the paycheck.

Tell me this doesn’t sound like a real job:

• I work for a board of directors.
• It will take 40+ hours this week (on top of an additional 40 over that last 2                      weeks) to perform.
• I cannot yell at people who deserve it.
• I cannot roll my eyes at people who want special favors.
• I have to meet multiple deadlines.
• The work will take priority over dinner for my family at least twice this week.
• At some point I will have to hide behind a locked door and take deep breaths.
• I will leave the pool later than intended – every day this week.  
• I will bite my own tongue literally to avoid making a snarky comment to                          someone who does not deserve it.
• I will say no to an offer of help because it will take longer to explain how to do something than it will take to do it myself.
• I will become borderline dehydrated from forgetting to drink water on both Saturday and Sunday.
• I will eat something very bad for me while thinking to myself just f*** it.
• I will panic about something important I forgot to do and then I will fix it.
• I will not get one (or some) of these blog posts written and I’ll feel resentful and guilty.
• I will get only 4 hours of sleep a couple of nights.

Sounds like a real job to me.

And then I will finish the Meet Director’s manual. That I am writing from scratch. Because I don’t want to do this forever and someday I might die and they’ll need someone to know how to make a heat sheet.

Which is what I’m going to go do now.

Tune in tomorrow when we will discuss people who don’t read their emails and then claim ignorance as an excuse. 

Fall Broken

I think I understand why some successful writers live isolated existences -- sometimes estranged from their loved ones. They probably told a few too many people to shut up and go away.

People, in general, don’t like that. People who are your children and husband really don’t like that. I consider us all fortunate that I have managed not to say anything that will permanently damage my family’s spirits or sense of self-worth over the last three days – these glorious days of Fall Break.  

Aside from my laptop, my desk (the kitchen table) contains the following items: a Christmas-themed coffee mug filled with writing instruments, my candle, a bowl of artsy-fartsy inspirational items (like rocks, shells, and foreign coins), my coffee cup, and this:

Which I only use ironically. It gets pushed after I’ve completed something difficult or deficient. It also gets pressed when I have to walk away and give up. It’s been pushed about 100 times over the last week. A new record.

I must admit I have had unkind thoughts about the little cherubs to whom I gave life this week. More than once I have fought the urge to scream STOP TALKING, or MAKE YOUR OWN LUNCH, or DON’T BREATHE ON THE BACK OF MY HEAD. They discovered my “secret” workspace under the stairs, therefore, any success I have in there requires a bargaining session to ensure that I will be able to work uninterrupted. And if I must bargain for some quiet, I’m going to bargain for quiet with natural light and a comfortable chair. So I’ve found myself – for now – in the guest room sitting on a couch that needs new cushions and a slipcover beside a small window. And my laptop is atop my lap.

Fall Break isn’t a bed of roses for everyone…unless your blanket is made of thorns. It may be worse my generation and people older because there was no such thing when we were growing up. In the fall, we got out of school on Columbus Day and 2 days at Thanksgiving (I’m not sure how we ever managed without the day before Thanksgiving too -- it’s like we were indentured servants) and then by the time we got to Winter Break (which we called Christmas break because we didn’t care about things like inclusivity) we were SO. VERY. THANKFUL. By the time my kids to get Winter Break now, they’ve already had at least 3 mini breaks. There is no gratitude.

Fall Break is also a bummer because it arrives at about the same time that I finally feel like I have a modicum of control over the weekly schedule. It takes me that long to settle in. And then Fall Break lands on my calendar. It’s like when you go to the beach and you spread out your towel on the sand. You put on some sunscreen and your big hat and you make a little cup holder for your beverage right next to the towel. You stretch out with a great book in your hand and begin to read it, but just as you get to the end of the first page, someone comes and dumps a bucket of wet sand on you.

That’s Fall Break…a bucket of wet sand on my clean dry towel and my book.

For a parent who works from home, Fall Break can be a forced, unpaid leave-of-absence. There are choices to be made and none of them feel quite right. Fall Break is guilt because you’re in the same building with your kids (the home you all share) but you’re ignoring them. And then if you decide to spend time with them, there’s guilt because you’re not getting your work done. It’s starting and stopping and then having to go back and figure out where you were and then restarting just in time to be interrupted again. It’s having brilliant ideas while playing a game of checkers and then forgetting those ideas by the time you can get to your laptop. Fall Break is mayonnaise on your keyboard because you tried to make a sandwich between paragraphs. It’s the sounds of scotch tape and tearing paper coming from the other room that you know are resulting in a mess that will have to be cleaned up…and only after an argument. It’s all the work you have to do from day-to-day done under a heavy blanket of regret over not enjoying this “vacation” with your children.

Fall Break ends up being too much TV and too many video games and not enough time outside. It’s hearing about all the kids with regular parents who take them to the beach or to Europe or to New York or hiking the Appalachian Trail. And it’s questions everyday about why I don’t have a real job.

And that stings.

But here’s the upside of Fall Break – you can’t always get your blog posts finished in one day and in the 12+ hours that elapse, you discover the silver lining in your cloud. Which is what happened to me since I wrote what you just read.

Fall Break is also the following:

A 30-minute conversation with your 13-year-old about what the largest puppet in the world is. Is it Mr. Snuffleupagus (whose first name is Aloysius) or Big Bird? And are they puppets or are they costumes? And do those giant balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade count as puppets because they are controlled by string? If we include them, one of those would surely be largest? And are we forgetting any puppets? I had to admit to him that I hadn’t spent a great deal of time considering this question and that it was a clear oversight on my part. Fall Break gave us time to ponder this very important question and others like it.

I was also granted a double-edged sword type of opportunity. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my 14-year-old daughter actually knows the name of an NBA player that does not play for the Memphis Grizzlies. I was so proud and happy because for a moment I believed that she had taken an interest in something that her younger brother loved and that one day they would bond over this and be BFFs. But this moment was tempered by the realization that the reason she knew Lamar Odom was because he was married to Khloe Kardashian.

And then I had to explain to both of my kids what a brothel was.

But…silver lining…I got to explain instead of some middle school or high school kids who wouldn’t have had any interest in turning it into a conversation. My kids would have probably preferred that I not turn it into a conversation, truth be known, but I don’t really care. And now they know (in age-appropriate language) what a brothel is and also that the sex industry is predatory and unhealthy for those who work in it. I have NO GUILT WHATSOEVER about brainwashing them where this subject is concerned.

And then there was the hour-long conversation I had with my daughter about government and politics, racial inequality and social justice, and other issues in the news – including that ways in which the media’s agenda can distort our view of what’s going on in our country and in the world both intentionally and unintentionally. This conversation was mostly me listening and her talking. She has a wonderful world history teacher who discusses things that happened in history but on how those things are related to current events. I was given the chance to hear her developing her own thoughts…real thoughts…and I could ask her questions and watch her process them. It was as stunning to me as a panoramic sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean or the breathtaking view from the base of the Washington Monument.

It was all good and then afterward, they let me sit down and do my thing.

I’m not naïve enough to believe that this is a sure-fire answer for work-at-home parents on Fall Break, because I also believe this to be true:

But for today – I have it figured out and today is all I have to worry about right now.

Because we are on Fall Break.

When UNnecessity is the Mother of Invention

I want to discuss something very politically incorrect for a minute. I’m risking pissing some people off…like my husband and anyone else who looks forward to autumn for more than cooler temperatures and colorful foliage…but I think it needs to be said.

Football is barbaric.

Now before you shut me down and move onto the Bleacher Report, there are some things you need to know:

(1)    I love football too.

(2)    I spent about 15 hours this weekend watching 4 different games.

(3)    At one time in the not-too-distant past, our family held season tickets to two college football programs and season tickets to an NFL franchise team over 1000 miles away.

So I’m not out to cut down something I just don’t like or don’t understand. I’ve never personally known anyone who was seriously injured playing football. I don’t have a child who currently plays football.

I don’t really have a dog in this fight.

It’s just that I came to a realization (during my 15 hours of football spectatorship) this weekend that football is pretty violent and incredibly dangerous – even with all the training and precautions that are taken. It hit me during a timeout when one of the on-field commentators was oohing and ahhing over this contraption that was developed by someone on the football team’s training staff.  It was a pop-up tent – kind of like a pop-up camper – that was a mobile medical examination room on the sidelines.

The trainer who developed it did so to minimize the time it took between when a player was injured on the field and when someone could examine the damage. It drew the commentator’s attention after a particularly disturbing knee injury that had taken place on the field and instead of whisking the player off to the locker room, he was whisked over to this popup tent where we has attended to by medical staff.

The commentator thought it was really cool and gushed about what a great idea it was…and she was right. I’m all in favor of people receiving urgent medical care through the quickest means possible, so in terms of patient care, this was pretty revolutionary. I’m sure it was appreciated by all of the injured players who had to utilize it during the game – of which there were several. I’m sure it was also appreciated by those players’ mothers.

But, is anyone else bothered by the fact that there are so many injuries in this sport that this mobile training unit is necessary? During my hours-long football viewing this weekend, I would estimate that I saw no fewer than 25 moderate to serious injuries which resulted in someone being assisted onto the sidelines or into the locker room. Four games – 25 injuries. That’s not a great track record – especially when you consider how much padding they are wearing.

Concussions, torn muscles and damaged connective tissue, broken bones, hyperextended joints…I’ve seen it all. My most vivid football watching memory is from back in 1985 when Lawrence Taylor sacked Joe Theisman causing a career-ending compound leg fracture. There was visible bone and the instant replay made it possible to see it numerous times from every angle imaginable.  It’s the closest I’ve ever come to throwing up from something I saw on TV. Gruesome. But none of it keeps me (or anyone else) from watching.

We just accept that it’s part of the game.

It’s part of a game where both teams are trying to take a ball away from one another and they are expected to risk life and limb (both their own and that of their opponent) to stop the other team’s progress. We expect to see men sliding across the grass, tumbling over one another, and diving over piles of peers to land on their shoulders in the end zone. It’s similar to what we expect of our military…laying it all on the line for the greater good…only in this case, the greater good is 6 points on the scoreboard and a chance at a 7^th.

But I wonder about 200 or 500 or 1000 years from now…how will this be viewed?

When I studied the Roman Empire in school, the gladiator games were taught as an example of exploitation of power and excessive cruelty by public officials. Early on, slaves and criminals were sentenced to gladiator schools where they were trained in combat for the purposes of entertaining the people of a city in the public arena.

Fight well or die well – and if you died, it was all ok because you deserved it for being either poor, alien, or criminal.

But in the late republic, almost half of the gladiators were paid volunteers. For poor citizens or foreigners, enrolling in gladiator school was a potential fast track to social acceptance. You learned a trade; they fed you; they housed you. It was a fighting chance (literally) at fame and fortune for those who would had otherwise eluded the good life because of the station into which they were born. In addition, gladiator games offered cheap and exciting entertainment to the masses while offering sponsors highly effective opportunities for self-promotion. Gladiator schools were owned by the state and in some cases by private individuals to whom these gladiators were sworn and contracted. Their trade was subject to official oversight.

Does this sound at all familiar? Shall I describe for you the public spaces that were appropriated for larger arenas with more and more seating as the popularity of gladiator games grew?

The eventual decline of gladiator games occurred with the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. In one failed attempt at imperial legislation to end them for good (failed, because he ignored his own law), Constantine declared the following:

In times in which peace and peace relating to domestic affairs prevail, bloody demonstrations displease us. Therefore, we order that there may be no more gladiator combats. Those who were condemned to become gladiators for their crimes are to work from now on in the mines. Thus they pay for their crimes without having to pour their blood.

That’s pretty progressive when you consider that we don’t even take a football break for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  In fact, these days, football is often part of the celebration.

Thankfully, we don’t force a fight to the death on the football field. I’d like to believe that we wouldn’t celebrate that on the level they did in ancient Rome. Instead of Fight Well or Die Well, it’s more like Fight Well and Pray You Don’t Get Hurt, but if you do, we have the best medical available for you…in this tent over here on the sidelines. And you get free Gatorade during timeouts.

Most historical accounts agree that gladiator games existed in one form or fashion for around 1000 years, so if football does go the way of the do-do, it won’t likely be in my lifetime. I don’t know ya’ll…it just seems to me that our descendants 10 generations from now may look back at football someday with disdain. I’m sure they’ll do it while celebrating some other equally dangerous form of sport or entertainment, but they will criticize us nonetheless.

In the meantime, I’m sure I’ll continue to watch those who battle it out on the gridiron each week. When my teams take the field…and up until the first 280-pound player is carried off the field by 4 trainers…I’ll be screaming like those barbaric Romans did early in the first millennium CE. But after that injury…when the tent pops up on the sideline, or the golf cart speeds toward the locker room… I’ll remember for a moment that I won’t even let my own son play this sport because I think it’s too dangerous and I’ll probably start counting injuries again instead of touchdowns.

Just something to think about.

Shortest Post Ever

There's something that's been weighing on my this week and I want to write about it...but it's important. So I want to be incredibly intentional about it so that I can get it as right as possible.

And that's not to say that I haven't crafted some snippets of wisdom in the posts I've been sharing, but this subject deserves more than a couple of hours -- maybe more than a couple of days. I will undoubtedly treat every word, phrase, sentence, and paragraph way too preciously, but in the process I will flesh things out for myself and maybe, in the process, for someone else. That said, I'd like to get started on it during the limited time I have today.

So...this concludes today's post. Sorry if you were anticipating more.

I can assure you there will always be more...just not today.

Peace out, friends.

If You’re Looking for Something Deep and Meaningful…

You will need to look elsewhere today.

I was driving earlier this morning and listening to, of course, 80’s on 8 and what was playing? None other than Madonna…Open Your Heart from 1987. My mind immediately jumped to math and one of the primary uses that I have for it in my life…calculating time…in this case, how old I was and what I was doing in 1987*.

I was 13 or 14 and in the 8^th grade or 9^th grade (depending on the month). I found myself trying to remember what I might have been doing at exactly 8:45 on a Wednesday morning in October way back in 1987.

Junior High School…9^th grade…end of 1^st period Civics with Mr. Qualls…about to go to 2^nd period Geometry with Ms. Collier.

Why can I remember that but can’t remember to pick up my dry-cleaning or put the chicken in the crock pot?

Anyway, I pictured myself which means, I pictured my school portrait from that year which featured an asymmetrical permed hair-did and an obnoxiously-colorful, oversized Esprit sweater.  

Your basic 1980s horror show.

Then 1987 in general is where my mind floated. I couldn’t come up with anything really specific about that year except October 19 (which I’ll get to in a minute) and so I googled it and found these events which occurred in 1987:

January 8 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes for the first time above 2,000, gaining 8.30 to close at 2,002.25. (It closed in the 16,000s yesterday.)

February 20 – A second Unabomber bomb explodes at a Salt Lake City computer store, injuring the owner. (Ted Kaczynski, aka “the Unabomber” wasn’t captured until 1996.)

March 9 – The Irish rock band U2 releases their studio album The Joshua Tree. (Always and forever one of my top 5 favorite albums. Since then, lead singer, Bono, has gone on to do some humanitarian work.)

April 19 – The Simpsons cartoon first appears as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show. (The Simpsons have been on the air for 26 years meaning that Maggie could vote, drink, and run for Congress despite still being an infant.)

May 17 – USS Stark is hit by two Iraqi-owned Exocet AM39 air-to-surface missiles killing 47 sailors. (They’ve pretty much always been a thorn in our side—even when they were on our side…or we were on their side during the Iran-Iraq war…which was still going on in 1987…at which point, somehow, both nations had weapons that were made in the USA. Because foreign policy is hard.)

June 12 – During a visit to Berlin, Germany, President Ronald Reagan challenged Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. (And eventually they did…beginning November 9, 1989...after which we became BFFs with Russia, peace broke out in the former Eastern Bloc, everyone lived happily ever after, and Vladimir Putin hunted dangerous wildlife without a shirt on.)

July 11 -- World population is estimated to have reached five billion people, according to the United Nations. (We are about 7.3 billion now. Projected to be 8.5 billion by 2030 and 9.7 billion by 2050. Which means that population experts are very positive about our global abilities when it comes to making babies and not dying.)

August 4 -- The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine, which had required radio and television stations to "fairly" present controversial issues. (Ummmmmm, yeah….EPIC. FAIL.)

September 28 – The second Star Trek TV series The Next Generation premieres in syndication. (I’m including this because I love all things Star Trek and Patrick Stewart and it’s my blog so I can include non-sequiturs at will.)

October 19 – BLACK MONDAY. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell exactly 508 points to 1,738.74 (22.61%). 

November 18 -- Iran–Contra affair: U.S. Senate and House panels release reports charging President Ronald Reagan with ‘ultimate responsibility’ for the affair. (Because in 1987, much like in 2015, it’s always better – and by better, I mean easier –  to find one person to blame than to recognize institutional quagmires and years-long foreign-policy "shifts" that allow clusterf***s to flourish. Thanks, Obama.)

December 8 – The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is signed in Washington, D.C. by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. (Because all Presidents do good things and all Presidents do not-so-good things and it’s important to look at people and presidencies in their entirety – not just the parts that affirm your worldview. Unless you’re a fanatic. Then you get to look at whatever you want and be a party leader. Or a radio personality.)

So about Black Monday…

At the time, this 14-year-old thought is was the end of the world as we knew it. Seriously, people killed themselves. We thought we were headed into a Mad Max type apocalyptic world economic shutdown. In my Civics Class we were playing the Stock Market game which was sponsored by the Commercial Appeal in Memphis – a city I would surely never live in. NOBODY won the Stock Market game that year except for Paul Tudor Jones II – a native Memphian, incidentally. As it turns out it was not the end of the world because I was still here for the next Mad Max type apocalyptic world economic shutdown which occurred in 2008. And by “here”, I mean I was alive and living in Memphis…for a decade.

No one knows what the future holds, my friends.

But back to my car ride this morning because I’m worried that things are starting to get deep and meaningful and I really want to focus on Madonna. In 1987, Madonna was 29 years old. She could frolic about on stage and writhe awkwardly on the floor wearing a cone-shaped bustier and the only people who recoiled were people who had a moral issue with her music or her overtly sexual persona…her performance identity. Now when she does that (because she did do that at the Grammy’s back in February), people are divided into two camps. There are some who just don’t think a 57-year-old has any business carrying herself that way – and I get that.

Then there are others who would never want to see their own daughter writhing on the floor dressed in a cone-shaped bustier, but hope and pray that they themselves have that kind of energy and confidence when they are 57. Not that they would want to or would be given the opportunity to writhe on the floor at the Grammy’s, but they would love to be able to dance and sing (albeit in a different outfit) around their family room at 57 without requiring anyone to call Emergency Services when they’re done.

But did you catch that?  Madonna is 57 years old. That means that 1987 was half her life ago and she’s still dancing.

There was a time when I might have thought that 57 was really old. This is not that time. Age becomes more relative with each passing day. I was going to provide you with a list of people who are also 57 -- for some shock and awe. Some names would shock and amaze you -- two kids from the Brady Bunch, Charlie Bucket from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, Gretl from the Sound of Music. Others might be easier to absorb – Matt Lauer, Steve Buscemi, Christiane Amanpour – not because they seem older, but because we never “knew” them as kids.  You can Google more names. Shaun Cassidy is there too.

There was also a list of people who died at the age of 57…Patrick Swayze, Madeline Kahn, Jan Hooks and Humphrey Bogart. That puts things in perspective too. None of us know if we will even get 57 years.

Time and its passage are always fascinating to me. How the days seem to drag at times and then suddenly you’re looking back at years which passed by in a flash. I wonder, in 28 years, what people will remember about 2015. I wonder what 57 will look like for me. I wonder if there will ever be a Teens on 10 radio station on Sirius XM and, if there is, if anyone will take the time to write this kind of drivel inspired by the music they hear driving down the road.

And I wonder why you are still reading.

I guess they can’t all be masterpieces.

*According to Wikipedia, this song was actually released late in 1986.