This spring, I'm charged with returning to one of my favorite cities on the planet -- New Orleans. I'm going to down the muffaletas, sip some chicory coffee, and waltz around the streets with a hurricane in hand for the entirety of my stay. The only problem? To get there, I'll be skipping the monotonous drive through southern Mississippi's wall-eyed I-10 corridor and flying straight into Louis B. Armstrong airport for a wedding. Did I mention I'll be locked in a plane for 4 1/2 hours. With a toddler. During nap time. Also, there will be an hour and a half layover in that cesspool of domestic air travel, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, ATL.
Now I've seen some things in my day. Frail hookers lined the streets of my commute through southeast DC. I had to interview people inches away from a hefty pool of blood after a Georgia shootout in the projects. When I was 8, a woman whose brain was leaking out of her head was carted past me in a Central Florida ER. All told, these are not nice things to encounter in one's life. But flying with a toddler 25,000 feet off the ground in a steel bullet of strangers and weird air pressure? Whoa-ho-ho. We're in a whole new territory here.
This is not to say I'm scared of some crash-and-burn flight. I've been a regular flier since I first boarded an airplane to New York City at 17. Every flight I've had has been similar -- thunderous engines, stale air, those damn carts the stewardesses roll over your toes when they're trying to serve your neighbor a third of a Coke. I don't love flying. It's a necessary evil, and I don't view it as any different than a Greyhound bus ride, only on a plane you're looking at clouds instead of crack pipes and discarded McDonald's bags.
I know, I know -- flying is supposed to be of a different ilk. My mother-in-law likes to remind me and everyone within earshot about the days of aviation's golden years, when one actually cared about decorum and dressed in something other than a velour track suit and flip-flops. Back then flying was expensive and glamorous. I'm sure it was also a lot more pleasant, those years before passengers had to be corralled through a litany of checkpoints, baring callouses and corns at one station and having their saucy bits unloaded at others. In these modern, anything-goes times, I'm a bit freaked out about taking a baby through all of that. And exposing him to the inevitable pair of Tasmanian Devil print pajamas my seatmate will be donning.
Of course, I get what's really going on in el brain-o. This isn't about traveling with a kid, per se. Rather, it's the prospect of looking like an absolute dolt in front of hundreds, perhaps thousands of strangers. Scratch that. It's looking like an absolute dolt of a parent in front of all these strangers. And being unable to control the situation. I can't call off pat-downs, drag a gallon of milk on board, or avoid checking a carseat. I can't blast the child's favorite records and distract him with the prospect of going to a park or seeing a truck. Instead, I'll have to just sit there and take it. And while I would like to tell myself that I don't care what 250 glaring passengers are thinking, in truth, I don't want to come off as a class-A moron. I don't want to turn beet red, and offer excuses, and worst of all, put my kid in a situation where he is the focus of strangers' hatred.
To try to cope with this new-found fear, I've entered a healthy stage therapists like to call denial. As in, I have yet to buy my plane tickets. As in, I've Google-mapped a trip from Chapel Hill to New Orleans at least 10 times, hoping the drive will go from 15 hours to five. As in I keep imagining I will magically land in New Orleans with kid, unscathed, well-rested, and ready for king cake and a pot of gumbo! As petty as it sounds, this denial thing has also led me to think about all of the other challenges I'd rather encounter to avoid this one. Bring on the skydiving. Whip out the snakes and scorpions and spiders. Throw me in a friggin closet with one of those hoarder people's 30-plus years of shit. I'll be cool! These are escapable horrors! Trapped in a steel bullet with cranky strangers and bitchy flight attendants and a screaming bambino? Lord, take me now.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
The Feeble Weeble?
Growing up, I attended a Catholic K-8 school which, like many private schools, relied on a host of fundraisers to keep the lights on and the a/c cold. Each fall, my classmates and I were ushered into the parish hall to hear a charismatic presenter discuss how we students could sell, sell, sell our way to glory. Glory apparently meant earning a bunch of cheap crap by selling wrapping paper and canisters of popcorn to as many neighbors and family members as you could con into signing your gridded fundraising folder. Of course, as students we didn't have the ability to understand our school needed the extra support. To us, fundraisers were a means by which we could get stuff -- stuff our parents wouldn't buy for us. Our savvy salesmanship was the ticket to boomboxes, massive vats of candy, and small color televisions for our private use.
The biggest fundraiser of the year was a magazine drive. For those of you who don't remember life before the Internet, magazines were the source of information about fashion, food, and yes, news. Sure there was cable, but with an 8:30 p.m. bedtime, most of the shows I wanted to watch were out of reach. Magazines filled my informational needs. I was (and still am) all about mags. My family subscribed to a number of them, and I remember sitting in the fundraising presentation silently tallying how much I was going to rake in through sales to my parents, extended family, and neighbors. I would earn my own color TV, a Sony Walkman, and all the puppy posters I wanted without having to pander to dear old mom and dad.
I should note that I was likely about seven years old.
By fundraiser's end I had an armful of Weebles, though that paled in comparison to the wealthiest members of my class -- kids whose parents owned sizable law firms and passed the envelope to hundreds if not thousands of people. I sold many magazines (without my parent passing the envelope around the workplace, thank you very much), but it never seemed like I had enough. One Friday, I watched a classmate receive a plastic grocery bag containing at least 300 of the stupid things. It didn't take long to feel inadequate and well, poor in comparison to my Weeble-laden peers. The dream of a private TV and lifetime supply of Milk Duds began to fade. At the fundraiser's conclusion, several winners paraded onto the stage and collected their Walkmans, remote-controlled Porsches, and yes, TVs. With $200 in sales, I received a cardboard bank filled with Tootsie Rolls from my homeroom teacher. There was no applause, no proud march across the stage, no TV. I threw my Weebles out that afternoon.
Of course, this sort of competition doesn't end with a handful of Weebles in a South Florida landfill. As I grew older, it morphed. It became the pool we didn't have, the cars we didn't drive, the vacations we didn't take. Though my family was solidly middle class, perhaps even upper middle class, I spent a lot of time comparing how my family "measured up" to others. And often those comparisons were unfair. Whereas those kids with the TVs and troughs of Snickers had stuff, I had both of my parents, a nice house, friends, and plenty of fine vacations. I had everything I wanted, and probably a little more than I needed.
Now, as a full-fledged adult, I find those pangs of competition and comparison welling up again. It just takes a minute to rationally talk yourself down from one-upping a friend or kicking yourself for not having x, y, and z.
As a kid, I thought adulthood meant total security. You get married, buy a house, maybe have some kids, a dog and -- boom -- suddenly, you've got it all. Forget the club, your weekends are now chockfull of trips to Home Depot for floodlights and organic compost! And you're so happy about that you could scream. Maybe it's that I notice these things more or maybe society has just changed that much in the past ten years, but it seems like a lot of people are trying really hard to outdo their peers. Somehow, in a down economy, I'm seeing brand new cars everywhere. The malls are full of people buying, buying, buying. It's difficult to go to a restaurant in my area without a reservation or at least a lengthy wait for a table. And everyone on the planet is now toting a smartphone. All of this makes me question how much we all need this stuff in our lives? What are we all working so hard for? A bunch of crap we likely won't care about next week, much less next year?
In many ways, it feels like Weebledom has swept the land, only with higher stakes. Like it or not, most of us are never going to live the lifestyle that Beyonce does. My child will never own a 24-karat gold rocking horse or drive a Bugatti under my tutelage. And really, I'm totally happy about that. If I could have offered my parents any advice back in the day, it would have been to give me less and make me work more. Which is all the more reason I find the current obsession with having the latest and greatest -- the tablet/house/car that's better than anyone else's -- all the more puzzling.
In a stroke of serendipity, I recently saw a Weeble (or something like it). It had been years since I'd even thought about one, and yet there one was, basking in the glory of a black BMW's dashboard. My initial response was to feel my arm, to see if I was wearing one. When I caught myself doing this, it was easy to smile and move on with a happy nod and not a second glance.
The biggest fundraiser of the year was a magazine drive. For those of you who don't remember life before the Internet, magazines were the source of information about fashion, food, and yes, news. Sure there was cable, but with an 8:30 p.m. bedtime, most of the shows I wanted to watch were out of reach. Magazines filled my informational needs. I was (and still am) all about mags. My family subscribed to a number of them, and I remember sitting in the fundraising presentation silently tallying how much I was going to rake in through sales to my parents, extended family, and neighbors. I would earn my own color TV, a Sony Walkman, and all the puppy posters I wanted without having to pander to dear old mom and dad.
I should note that I was likely about seven years old.
At the presentation, we were all given a glossy chart that explained the point totals needed for the light-up yo-yo and neon jelly bracelet prizes. However, the real way to track your status was through your Weebles. A Weeble was simply a colored cotton puff with googly eyes. It was attached to a white elastic band meant to go around your wrist. Each $20 in magazine sales equalled one Weeble. On Fridays, as you marched your envelope full of checks to the fundraising rep's corner of the cafeteria, so were you bestowed with your Weeble reward. The more you had on your arm, the more you had sold. It was a public declaration of your success, and an easy way to spark competition among students. Weeble-wearers could be called without notice to ice cream socials and dances during class time. Weeble-wearers were going to get stuff, and lots of it. Not surprisingly, the three-cent puffs became the campus status symbol du jour.
By fundraiser's end I had an armful of Weebles, though that paled in comparison to the wealthiest members of my class -- kids whose parents owned sizable law firms and passed the envelope to hundreds if not thousands of people. I sold many magazines (without my parent passing the envelope around the workplace, thank you very much), but it never seemed like I had enough. One Friday, I watched a classmate receive a plastic grocery bag containing at least 300 of the stupid things. It didn't take long to feel inadequate and well, poor in comparison to my Weeble-laden peers. The dream of a private TV and lifetime supply of Milk Duds began to fade. At the fundraiser's conclusion, several winners paraded onto the stage and collected their Walkmans, remote-controlled Porsches, and yes, TVs. With $200 in sales, I received a cardboard bank filled with Tootsie Rolls from my homeroom teacher. There was no applause, no proud march across the stage, no TV. I threw my Weebles out that afternoon.
Of course, this sort of competition doesn't end with a handful of Weebles in a South Florida landfill. As I grew older, it morphed. It became the pool we didn't have, the cars we didn't drive, the vacations we didn't take. Though my family was solidly middle class, perhaps even upper middle class, I spent a lot of time comparing how my family "measured up" to others. And often those comparisons were unfair. Whereas those kids with the TVs and troughs of Snickers had stuff, I had both of my parents, a nice house, friends, and plenty of fine vacations. I had everything I wanted, and probably a little more than I needed.
Now, as a full-fledged adult, I find those pangs of competition and comparison welling up again. It just takes a minute to rationally talk yourself down from one-upping a friend or kicking yourself for not having x, y, and z.
As a kid, I thought adulthood meant total security. You get married, buy a house, maybe have some kids, a dog and -- boom -- suddenly, you've got it all. Forget the club, your weekends are now chockfull of trips to Home Depot for floodlights and organic compost! And you're so happy about that you could scream. Maybe it's that I notice these things more or maybe society has just changed that much in the past ten years, but it seems like a lot of people are trying really hard to outdo their peers. Somehow, in a down economy, I'm seeing brand new cars everywhere. The malls are full of people buying, buying, buying. It's difficult to go to a restaurant in my area without a reservation or at least a lengthy wait for a table. And everyone on the planet is now toting a smartphone. All of this makes me question how much we all need this stuff in our lives? What are we all working so hard for? A bunch of crap we likely won't care about next week, much less next year?
In many ways, it feels like Weebledom has swept the land, only with higher stakes. Like it or not, most of us are never going to live the lifestyle that Beyonce does. My child will never own a 24-karat gold rocking horse or drive a Bugatti under my tutelage. And really, I'm totally happy about that. If I could have offered my parents any advice back in the day, it would have been to give me less and make me work more. Which is all the more reason I find the current obsession with having the latest and greatest -- the tablet/house/car that's better than anyone else's -- all the more puzzling.
In a stroke of serendipity, I recently saw a Weeble (or something like it). It had been years since I'd even thought about one, and yet there one was, basking in the glory of a black BMW's dashboard. My initial response was to feel my arm, to see if I was wearing one. When I caught myself doing this, it was easy to smile and move on with a happy nod and not a second glance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)