Author: the outside lane

Happy. That about covers it.
continuing education, Explaining the Strange Behavior

Exit Stage Left

the outside lane

To audition for community theater, or not?  All my excuses for not doing it have evaporated in the past year, or so.

I haven’t auditioned for any stage work since college.  The last stage audition I did was for Into the Woods, where I blew my 2nd callback.  It was one of those things where, while it was happening, I knew it was happening and I couldn’t stop it.  It was like hitting a bum note that you have to hold a while, and not being able to correct that sucker back into tune.  The director asked for a second interpretation of a delivery, and I did the EXACT SAME THING again.  Twice more.  I could not physically change my delivery and it was amazing in how awful it was.

The director and I were locked on each other’s eyes, and he was looking at me like I was some kind of bad American Idol audition joke, and I was looking at him like I knew it.  Train wreck.

I did get a part, but I turned it down because I chickened out.  I was afraid I was going to have another acting-stroke, only in front of the audience.

Since then, I’ve excused myself because either I was too busy, lived too far away from any theater, or had a very small child.  Now, I live 1/2 a mile from the theater, have the time, and my child is old enough to either sit and read during rehearsals, or hang out at home with Daddy–those are good excuses to cover up the reason:  I’m afraid I don’t have the chops anymore.  I’m afraid of being rejected.  I’m afraid of not being Meryl Streep–I shouldn’t be afraid of this because I have never been, nor will I ever be an actor of that caliber.

Anyway, since it’s fear that has kept me away, I think I should face it and get my butt down to the auditions in two weeks.  Worst case scenario, I freeze up and some people giggle at me behind my back.  Best case scenario, I get the part I want and spend the run of the show making people laugh.  Likeliest scenario, I earn a part in the ensemble, make a few new friends, and have a laugh myself.

Howling Sea Lane, parenting

Where are the Parents?

the outside lane

[In which she is judgmental and foaming at the mouth.  Be warned.]

I keep reading these stories about teens raping and recording, and I find myself asking the same question over, and over again. 

Where are the parents?

Where are the parents when boys are carrying a dead weight, limp girl across town, to party after party?

Where are the parents when fifteen year old girls are drinking themselves into oblivion at a slumber party?

Where are the parents when boys are at a fifteen year old girl’s slumber party?

Where are the parents when text messages containing photographic evidence of criminal activity are being sent through phones paid for by those parents?

Where are the parents when those photos and videos are being uploaded onto personal computers within their homes?

Where were those parents when those children were developing social awareness and social consciousness?

Where were the parents when the truth came out, and why didn’t we see them on the news apologizing*?

These parents are people who should be about my age.  Maybe a little older.  Maybe a year or two younger.  But these parents are from my generation.  We are the jackasses who are responsible for what is coming up now, and I cannot fathom why we have allowed it.  Then again, I didn’t have cool parents, and I certainly am not one.

Why, for one second, would you provide your teenager–whose brain is still developing–access to alcohol or drugs?  Why would you provide an evironment that encouraged other children–CHILDREN–to come and indulge**.  16 year olds aren’t known for their excellent decision making skills, or their ability to self-regulate as it is.  Why would you want to further impair their already under-developed sensibilities?!  Why?!  What do you expect will happen?***

Kids are stupid.  That’s a fact.  They can’t help it.  This is why we don’t let them run for President.  The worst thing about teenagers (and I say this having been one, and having known several personally) is that they think they know everything, and believe in their own immortality.  They aren’t able to put two and two together to understand that rape, plus bragging about rape at 16 can mean being 46 before you’re out of jail.  Teenagers under the influence of alcohol…  Even worse.  That’s what they have parents for.

We are supposed to be there to keep them inside the lines until their little frontal cortexes are developed enough that they can tell the difference between a good idea and something that sounded good at the time.  We are supposed to provide them with structure and examples of good ideas so that they have a solid basis for comparison.  We are supposed to punish them when they miss the mark so that they understand consequences, and so that they are less likely to make mistakes that would cost them dearly.

We aren’t their friends.  We aren’t their buddies.  We can’t be afraid that they won’t like us.  We have to be the grown-ups so that they can make it through to adulthood.  And when they screw up, we have to enforce the rules. 

We have to love them, nurture them, treat them with dignity and respect, set expectations for them, encourage them, drive them, require that they meet standards of decency, be there to catch them when they fall and help them back up, and hopefully get them out of high school and into college with self esteem, self respect, respect for others, and a desire to be something more than they already are–no matter how awesome that “already are” is. ****

We have to own up and apologize to them when we are wrong, and set that standard of taking responsibility for them.  We have to model the behavior we expect, which sometimes means having less fun than we’d like to.  This makes me think of a poster that hung in the nurse’s office of my high school.  It read, over a pregnant belly, “Having a baby is like being grounded for 18 years.”  That is no lie. 

We have to accept responsibility for our own actions, and accept responsibility for our own parenting choices, and not try to blame the video games (we bought them), the movies (we took them to see), the music (we gave the allowance that purchased), the television (we used to babysit them), or the government (we voted into office.)  If our kids are sociopaths from birth, it is our responsibility to deal with them so that others aren’t dealt with by them.  If we’re the ones who screwed them up?  Listen:  We brought them into this world.  They didn’t ask to be here.  We OWE them good parenting.  We OWE them.  It is our job to bring them up through this world.  We did this to them, not the other way around.

*I know the answer to this one:  They were following the advice of their defense attorneys.  My kid would have already pleaded so guilty to get away from my wrath, that his attorney would have been begging me to go on the air and tell the world what hell I had wrought on him, so as to soften the jury’s hearts.  

**Don’t ever try to lure or offer these things to my child.  I will scalp you and wear your forehead for a hat.  Try me.  I look amazing in hats.

***No.  Don’t go there.  Don’t try to tell me that kids who are denied the ability to party at home, go nuts with the frat boys when they start school.  I didn’t.  None of my sheltered girlfriends did.  My close guy friends didn’t.  I think it depends on the kid, depends on the level of expectation the kid was raised with, and depends on how successfully the kid navigates stress and peer pressure–which has a lot to do with parenting.  Which brings me back to this:  WHERE ARE THE PARENTS?

****This is effing exhausting, by the way.  And it never ends.  Oh my god, it never ends, not even when you are trying to go to the bathroom.

books, Reviews

Reviews: Weight Loss, Living Life, and the Brady Family

the outside lane

I was trying to decide on a book, when I came across this one with nesting dolls on the cover, and decided to give it a try.

 

Stranger Here: How weight loss surgery transformed my body and messed with my head, by Jen Larsen was…sad.  It’s a good read, but it is a sad read.  It did make me think about how there is no magic bullet to any success.  Weight loss surgery is no easier than hitting the gym.  There is still a lot of will power required, and possibly even more required thought about food and eating than doing something like Weight Watchers.  It isn’t easy to have your insides rearranged, and it isn’t easy to change your life to fit new innards.  Even harder is the work required to get your head right because if you don’t love yourself fat, skinny isn’t going to change the self-loathing.  And that’s the whole point of Larsen’s memoir.

4 out of 5 stars.

 

 

13 Little Blue Envelopes is a book by Maureen Johnson.  Clearly, I did not choose this one for the cover.  I chose this one because it was $.99 when I bought it, and I was looking for light reading.  It is a sweet, but not cloying YA novel that follows 17-year-old Ginny across Europe.  I’m not going to tell you anything else about it, other than that I loved it.  I loved it so much that I actually clapped when I saw that a sequel had arrived.

 

The Last Little Blue Envelope follows Ginny back to Europe and introduces new friends.  I loved this one, too.  Yes, you could see the end coming from the beginning, but it was an end worth getting to, and just as easy and enjoyable as the first.  Read this.

4.75 out of 5 stars for both.

 

I also read Here’s the Story, by Maureen McCormick.  I loved Cindy Brady best, but clearly Marcia’s was the hair to have. Her memoir was a little like if Mackenzie Phillips and Melissa Gilbert’s memoirs had a baby.  Yeah, let that sink in.  Definitely worth reading if you like memoirs, and especially if you grew up watching the Brady Bunch, but not really easy prose.

3.75 out of 5 stars.

Explaining the Strange Behavior, Family, Religion

My Soul Cries Out to Thee

the outside lane

I left work early today, and I was home before Mom brought Thor in from their excursions.  I was more than two hours earlier than I ever get to the house.  When I heard them coming in the front door, I told B, “I’m going to hide.”  So, I threw a blanket over myself and sat on the sofa–hiding in plain sight works on 7 year olds.  It works on Grandmas, too because I had to wave at Mom to get her to notice me, and put a finger over my lips to keep her from exclaiming.

Thor was standing not 3 feet from me, and B said, “Hey, I think there is a lump over there on the sofa that might want a hug.” Thor paused, then walked over to me and started laughing.  And he laughed, and laughed, and laughed until he had tears in his eyes, hugging me, then leaning back to look at me and laugh some more.

It’s amazing and wonderful how something so simple and silly can bring so much joy.

My mom called me later to tell me how happy it made her to see how much the boy and I love each other, and to say, “And that’s how much I love you, too.”

You guys…I am humbled and grateful every day of my life.  It isn’t possible to do enough to deserve the love I’ve had around me, and it pricks at the most latent parts of my spirituality.  Critics talk about how the desperate and the downtrodden invent gods to make themselves feel better, but it is when I am at my happiest that I most want one.  I just want to say thank you and express my gratitude to someone–I need to say thank you*!  I’m after God’s heart because mine gets so full.  I miss my old zealotry and surety the most when I am bursting to say thank you.

Thor wanted to show me one of the Bibles my mom has bought him–it’s verse style, not story style, so he’s very impressed.  I asked if he’d like to see my favorite verse, and he said yes, but he certainly hoped it was in the New Testament because the Old Testament sure is boring.  He was in luck.

Romans 8:38, 39 reads, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

He read that out loud in whatever translation his was, and I said, “That’s my favorite verse, and that’s how much I love you.  Nothing can ever separate you from how much I love you, or change that you are mine.”

It’s always been the “because He first loved me” aspect of Christianity that attracted me to the faith.

At this point in my life, I have a thousand more questions than I will ever have answers regarding God, but that’s okay.  Because if the god I chose  loves me anywhere near the way I love Thor–anywhere near the way my mother loves me, then the questions and uncertainty won’t bother him at all.  Not even my disbelief could separate me from that love.  (Sacrilege!  I know.  But not even his willful refusal to acknowledge me would make me turn my back my son, and I am an imperfect being.  It is possible [I think not probable, since he doesn’t show any tendencies toward serial killing or despotism] that he could do things to horrify and make me not like him, and possible that he could distress and disappoint me, but there is nothing that could quell the love I have for him.  Maybe that’s part of the imperfection of humanity–if it is, I prefer it to deity.)

Anyway…it is in every sense of the word a blessing to be married to my husband and into his family, and to belong to the family I was born into, and to have the family of friends I’ve made, and especially to be the family that we became when we had Thor, and I want to express my gratitude to everyone who has made even an ounce of it possible.

Here is Thor, having bored himself to sleep, reading Genesis.
Here is Thor, having bored himself to sleep, reading Genesis.

 

*This is a real issue for me.  I have sat on hold for 15 minutes waiting for a store manager, just to say thank you for good service.  I have a compulsive need to show gratitude that can manifest in a slavish devotion depending upon the level of thanks I am giving.  I guess there are worse compulsions?

Uncategorized

Thunder

the outside lane

A few weeks ago, we were expecting severe weather, and Thor was worrying that there might be a thunderstorm while he was at school.  He said he didn’t like the loud noises.  I told him, “If it does start to storm, I’m going to yell up into the sky, so when you hear the thunder you know it’s me.  I’m yelling, ‘I LOVE YOU THOR!’ Only, I’m doing it in grumbly voice to make you laugh.” 

He smiled.  He said, “What about the lightning?”

“That’s you,” I told him.  “When it lightnings, that’s you talking back to me.  What will you be saying?”

He thought, then said, “I’ll be saying, ‘Yay! I love you too, Mama!'”

We had some thunder on the way to school today and he laughed, “I hear you,” he said.  Then, he put on his grumbly voice and rumbled, “I LOVE YOU THOR!”

I hope that sticks with him.

A dear, dear friend of mine has a son who is just on the cusp of adulthood, and who is working through making some very important, very adult decisions that a lot of teens just dash through without thinking.  She has raised a son who was willing to sit down and talk through his through his thought process with her, and while she can’t control his choices, she has parented him to understand that her guidance is valuable.  That is golden.

So, when Thor was sitting on my lap this morning, snuggled up on my shoulder for morning hugs, I was praying silently, “Please let this stick.  Please let this be what he remembers.  Please let this level of comfort and trust grow with the boy, so that when he thinks he’s too old for hugs, he still trusts me enough to be honest.” 

And, “Please let me remember these moments when he is a teenager.”