Anything Said: June 2005

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Speaking in hypotheticals

Last night, the husband and I had an argument about our hypothetical future children. Specifically, our hypothetical future son, and what we might do if said hypothetical son wants to join the (currently blatantly homophobic on an institutional level) Boy Scouts.

The husband's position is as follows: Yes, the fact that the Boy Scouts organization discriminates against gay kids is sucky. Yes, we will teach our children not to discriminate. But I was a Boy Scout and it was great. We got to do all kinds of outdoorsy stuff. All my friends were members. My mom was a troop leader. What if all of our hypothetical future son's friends join the Boy Scouts? Do you want him to be excluded? Huh? DO YOU HATE YOUR HYPOTHETICAL SON?

I counter with the following position: Yes, I understand that individual boy scout troops can be great opportunities for boys to make friends, learn outdoorsy skills, and wear stiff uniforms adorned with patches. No, I do not want my hypothetical future son to be a big non-Boy-Scout loser while all of his friends run off on camping trips and whatever the hell else Boy Scouts do. Any hypothetical future son of mine will already have enough odds stacked against him in the social department, what with the excessive amount of nerd genes with which he will assuredly be blessed. HOWEVER. Would I allow a child of mine to join a school club if full rights of membership in said club were offered exclusively to white kids? No. What about an academic quiz team that accepted both girls and boys as members, but only permitted boys to be team leaders? Of course not. So why would I allow my hypothetical future son to join a social club that, regardless of the good intentions of individual troops, at an institutional level teaches children that gay people are not worthy of full membership?

This is a sticky issue. On one hand, I get what my husband is saying. Of course I wouldn't want to deny my child the opportunity to follow his interests, to join clubs with his friends, to participate in activities that meant a lot to my husband when he was growing up. But on the other hand, I want to raise compassionate, open-minded children. How can I teach my children that there is nothing wrong with being gay, and then allow them to join an organization that, in its tenets of membership, insists that being gay is wrong?

But then again, what about changing the system from the inside? Steven Cozza, a straight kid and Eagle Scout, learned about the Boy Scouts' discriminatory position against gays when he was 12 years old. He loved scouting and wanted to stay in the organization, but felt ashamed about the Scouts' institutional homophobia. He began an awareness campaign that started with simple letter-writing and ended up with the formation of Scouting for All, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the Boy Scouts to end their policy of discrimination against gay youth and leaders, an organization of which I am a member. I got interested in the organization a couple of years ago when I saw a documentary film about Cozza. I remember watching and listening to this amazing kid and thinking, "That guy has got to have some incredible parents." What a responsibility, and what a way to change the world -- to raise children with guts like that, and hearts like that. To teach them that religious values have nothing to do with hate, that people are people, that if they ever grow up and vote for war-mongering Texas Republicans for President they will be grounded for life... What a huge and utterly terrifying job.

I don't know. Like I said, it's a sticky issue. Thoughts?

Monday, June 27, 2005

The cotton anniversary

On this, the eve of my second wedding anniversary, I present to you my list of the Top 5 Lies The Husband and I Will One Day Tell To Our Grandchildren:

1. "Your grandfather and I met during a meeting of our college's chapter of the Concerned Students Political Action Campaign To Save The Whales By Breaking Up Sweatshops. When I saw him raise his hand to volunteer for the outreach committee, I immediately joined as well. It was love at first sight. He asked me out for coffee that night and, well, the rest was history..."

When in reality... your grandfather and I met when we lived across the hall from each other our freshman year of college. We had nothing in common and weren't really interested in each other, so we decided to start making out in the middle of a room full of people watching The Karate Kid on video. He was still dating his high school girlfriend at the time, so after a couple of months of subsequent make-out sessions he dumped me, provoking weeks of dutiful stalking on my part. The next semester, after the high school girlfriend was history, we decided to start making out again. And, well, the rest was history...

2. "Our wedding was the best day of our lives."

When in reality... our wedding was the SECOND best day of our lives. The best day of our lives was the day before the wedding, which involved much more playing with our friends, much more free drinks, and much less walking around in fancy white clothes. Also, it involved less check writing.

3. "I'll never forget the day your grandfather carried me over the threshold of our first home together as husband and wife."

When in reality... I'll never forget the day that your grandfather stuffed me and all of my belongings into a rental car and drove me up the East Coast to the premarital den of sin we called our first apartment.

4. "We didn't inhale."

When in reality... well, your grandfather didn't, anyway.

5. "After all these years, your grandfather is still just so damn hot. I mean, take a look at him! C'mere kids, and tell your grandfather how hot he is. Damn!"

When in reality... ok, well, that one will be true.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Causing Scenes

Most of the time, I feel like I am pretty good at advocating for my own wants and needs. If a situation is making me feel uncomfortable, I speak up. If someone is trying to take advantage of me or of someone I love, I raise a fuss. But every once in awhile my rural Midwestern roots get the better of me, and I find myself biting my tongue or curling up inward in order to prevent the ultimate disgrace from happening -- i.e. I must not, under any circumstances, Cause A Scene.

My parents taught me the importance of Not Causing A Scene early on in life. I was never one of those screaming, sticky-fingered children getting spanked in the check-out line at the grocery store. No, I was the sticky-fingered child getting swiftly ushered out of the grocery store, mom's hand firmly clamped over my mouth, and swept wordlessly into the minivan, where I promptly, efficiently, and - most importantly - quietly, received my due. So deep is her desire to Not Cause A Scene, that my mom would rather eat a meal that she didn't order than tell the waitress that she delivered the wrong plate to our table.

Yesterday, some friends and I went swimming in a pond, in an attempt to escape from the awful scorching heat that has overtaken Massachusetts this weekend. We had been out in the sun for awhile picking strawberries at a local orchard, and I don't think that I was drinking enough water to keep up with the sweat draining out of my pores. My friends jumped into the cool water of the pond and swam out easily away from shore, throwing a frisbee around between them. After stopping to fix a problem with my makeshift swimsuit (namely, it wouldn't stay on), I started to swim out to join them -- but after only a few strokes, I noticed my legs feeling heavy, like thick weights dragging me downward. I continued to try to move forward, but my legs got heavier and heavier until I was essentially pulling myself along using only my arms. I turned away from the center of the pond and switched to treading water and then, finally, to floating on my back, all the while becoming more and more panicked. I used my arms to move myself towards shore, using big sweeping pushes until finally I felt weeds brushing my back and reached my feet down to touch bottom. I got to the edge of the pond before my knees gave out, sitting down in the shallow water to try and figure out what the hell had just happened.

Upon emerging from the pond awhile later with our friends, my husband was a little shaken to hear what had transpired. "Why didn't you call for me?" he asked. "I would've come and helped you." I nodded, telling him, "Exactly. I know you would have, but I didn't want to cause a scene."

I guess some old habits do die hard...

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

Everything I need to know in life, I learned by searching Google: a tribute

1. Through a combination of perserverance, luck, and intensive google-stalking, I was able to piece together a choppy history of the past 10 years of the life of my high school boyfriend, the object of my obsessive first love. This history included several years in a Bible-themed training school in Florida, a job as a missionary in Australia, marriage, and a baby. Google brought me newsletters, an online journal, even a photograph of said rosy-cheeked offspring. Google also brought me satisfaction, by way of a photo of the offspring's mother, who is decidedly less cute than I am. Just saying.

2. Google-stalking allowed me to provide an old friend with invaluable information regarding the online activities of her husband. Chiefly: my friend was aware that her husband enjoyed participating in strategy and role-playing games with his friends on the weekends. What she did not know, though? Was that after finishing a game, taking off his cape, and putting his foam sword away, he and his friends would log onto countless online forums and meticulously recreate every last detail of the gameplay they just completed. We're talking page after page of "And then Brian advanced upon the knight, but the knight drew his weapon, so Brian retreated." The gaming, she could handle. The subsequent public write-up? Required a bit of redirection.

3. Google has helped to illuminate the possibilities (or lack thereof) for a number of dating options for assorted friends of mine. My friend M. was interested in a particular man she met through work, until a round of Google-stalking revealed him to be A) very young and B) clearly gay. Another friend was taken aback to learn, upon Google-stalking a new prospect with whom she had already been on several long-distance "phone dates", that her potential new boyfriend was an avid collector of tiny soldier dolls. She continued to pursue the relationship, but in the end the guy turned out to be kind of a jerk and an emotional cripple. Who collected tiny soldier dolls.

4. Google is not only good for stalking people and helping to track down the popular kids from your high school now that they are pudgy and working in dead-end jobs; it can also serve as a full-fledged MD. Over the past few years I have consulted Google regarding a number of aches and pains, and have received the following qualified diagnoses: broken foot (actually a sprained ankle), breast cancer (actually just PMS-related breast pain), heart attack/heart disease (actually panic attacks), diabetes (actually just got too hot too quickly one day), and sciatica (actually nothing wrong with me at all). And just like all the best medical advice - it's free!

5. The Google-stalk that inspired this post: today, when a colleague and I wondered aloud about "whatever happened to Corey Haim from License to Drive," Google was quick to help. Answer: he got really fat.

Monday, June 20, 2005

Getting attitude from people wearing patchwork pants

Today I got sassed by the MASSPIRGs. I was walking to the subway on my way home from work, and in order to advance on my journey I had to squeeze through a human archway comprised of fresh-faced PIRGs in matching t-shirts, holding out matching paper flyers in their matching meaningful-wristband-adorned hands. It was 5:00 and I was home-bound and undeterable. As I passed through the corridor of 19-year-olds, one of them smiled this huge toothy grin at me and chirped out "Hi there, ma'am! Do you have a couple of minutes for the MASSPIRG?" I flashed her my best "Yes, I get it, HOWEVER..." smile and shook my head, offering a quick "No, I'm sorry" as I continued on my way. I went about three or four more steps when I then heard the same voice, no longer chirpy, bark in the direction of my back: "Fine, then. Just keep on walking."

Um, ok? I guess I will?

I mean, what is THAT about? I'm pretty sure that's not in the MASSPIRG "How to Be Omnipresent While Still Maintaining Your Novelty" Handbook. It reminded me of this one really insistent door-to-door salesperson who stood on our front porch for what seemed like hours one day last year. I don't even remember what this guy was selling - probably crappy magazines of some kind, or candy. Regardless, my husband answered the door and, being the nice guy that he is, proceeded to engage in a lengthy dialogue with this salesman in which he (the salesman) would offer up for discussion an attractive feature of the item for sale, and my husband would counter with a kind but repetitive rejection of his offer. This went on for quite awhile before the salesman, frustrated, said something along the likes of "Come on, man, can you just help me out here?" At this, my husband finally informed him that "Buddy," (that's what he calls people when he Means Business) "buddy, we're not buying." And he shut the door.

The point being: if you are in someone's personal space, a space where they are generally not engaged in the act of making purchases of shelling out cash (relaxing in one's home, for example, or walking down a sidewalk), and your mission is to convince said person to suddenly become interested in making a purchase or shelling out cash, is it really in your best interest to be rude? Because, let me assure you, if I am told to "keep on walking," then that's what I am going to do. But if my nap is interrupted by a phone call from "Dave, from the Hillary Clinton re-election campaign," who first annoys me with his timing but then sweet-talks me into submission with tales of Republican evil-doing and sugar-coated stories about how much my $25 means personally to Hillary, THEN my friends, then will I write checks.

Saturday, June 18, 2005

Pop Culture Watch: Bo Bice Edition

The night before I left for Africa, a travesty occurred. The rightful heir to the American Idol throne, Bo Bice, was defeated by Oklahoma prom queen Carrie Underwood. I have been coming to terms ever since.

Let me introduce myself: my name is Melinda, I am a 28-year-old, progressive-thinking, feminist woman, and I watch American Idol weekly with great solemnity and pride. Never one to shirk from duty, I pick up the phone regularly to vote for my favorites during AI viewing season. I have followed the show since season 1, when my Once and Future Idol, Kelly Clarkson, otherwise known as She Whose Name Is Only Spoken With Respect In This Household, reigned victorious. Loyal to those I love, I have purchased both of Kelly's CDs and even showed up for the season 1 "American Idols on Tour" concert when it came to Massachusetts. No, I'm serious, I totally did. You can ask R., she was there too.

Having witnessed the glorious ray of light that was Kelly's participation in American Idol, I frankly found the next two seasons of the show to be somewhat of a letdown. Yes, the Clay/Ruben thing was intriguing, what with its odd undercurrent of race politics, but I didn't really like either of them that much. And with season 3, who didn't know that Fantasia was going to win from the beginning? So when season 4 rolled around, it was with great relief and anticipation that my eyes rested upon long-haired slightly-unwashed self-consciously-antiestablishment Bo Bice. Yes, his "rocker" shtick got slightly tired after awhile. Yes, he was in dire need of a hot oil treatment. But for me, he was the most interesting contestant to come around in awhile. Plus, the guy could sing. He was my instant favorite. He was, it seemed, most people's instant favorite.

So it came as a shock when, on May 25th, Carrie Underwood was declared the winner of season 4 of American Idol. Enraged, I flailed about the house, shouting things like "I demand a recount!" and "We shall overcome!" And then, still smarting, I left for my vacation. While away, I began to proceed through various stages of grief, finally settling myself upon a plateau of acceptance after remembering that Bo Bice, on account of NOT having won the American Idol title, would now be exempt from recording and releasing the shitty, so-bland-as-to-be-offensive "pop" songs that are contractually required of the show's winner. In particular, the inaugural single written for this year's Idol, entitled "Inside Your Heaven," contains such lyrical gems as "You're all I got/ You lift me up/ The sun and the moonlight/ All my dreams are in your eyes." From this, my Bo Bice would be spared.

You can imagine my horror, then, when I returned home to the United States 2 weeks later, only to learn that this year, both the American Idol winner AND the runner-up would be releasing the SAME GODAWFUL SINGLE, Bo's version coming out two weeks after Carrie's. My only consolation? Is that when Bo sings "Inside Your Heaven," his drowsy eyes and his "I just rolled out of bed, and I assure you I wasn't alone" rasp endow the song with some nicely filthy connotations, specifically of the vaginal variety. See in particular the lyrics: "I want to be inside your heaven/ take me to the place you cry from/ where the storm blows you away." Read into that what you will. I did.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

On riding the T again, after a two-week absence

Forty-five minutes
for a ride that should take ten?
Sounds great - Sign me up!!

90 degrees out
but in here there's no AC-
only sweat and backpacks.

The doors won't open.
An ugly baby is scream-
ing. The lights flicker.

The crazy guy next
to me is pleased: a captive
audience! He swigs

from his paper bag
and belts out a song about
Jesus and women.

The train lurches. An
announcement blares: "We are
experiencing

delays in service."
I am twenty minutes late.
Can I get a ride?

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

South Africa, Part 2: The Good, the Bad, and the Oddly Seasoned

Let the cramming of two and a half weeks of adventure into one paltry blog entry commence!

First, let's just get this out of the way: South Africa was AMAZING. (And yes, I fully intend an allusion to "The Amazing Race" -- don't think for a second that the husband and I didn't run up to an imaginary mat and greet an imaginary Phil at every new location we visited, because we totally did.) I'm still processing a lot of it, and think I will be for awhile. It was by no means a relaxing vacation -- but it lit a fire under me, which I think is even better.

Our first week or so was spent in Cape Town, where we stayed at a budget hostel at which the only other guests were a smarmy British man who spent all his waking hours scamming on the place's young female employees, and a suspiciously well-groomed pack of American students (with chaperones in tow) who we decided were missionaries. The husband and I spent much of our time in the hostel whispering admonishments to one another: "Don't do that in front of the missionaries!" "Watch your language - you'll scandalize the missionaries!" The hostel was low-key and lovely, with a little courtyard and cafe, and afforded us a gorgeous view of Table Mountain... on the one or two days of our stay during which it did not pour like rain was going out of style.

Yes, it rained pretty much every day that we were in Cape Town. We saw all of the sights, but we saw them from underneath umbrellas. We took a cablecar up to the top of Table Mountain on our first day in South Africa, but were trapped in a sea of fog and mist once we reached the top and couldn't see a thing. Fortunately, the skies cleared for our very last day in the city and we went up again to gape open-mouthed at the view. We gaped open-mouthed at a lot of things. We spent a couple days in the Waterfront area of the city, taking a ferry to Robben Island for a tour of the prison grounds. We went to the primarily Muslim Bo-Kap neighborhood, where the houses are all painted in bright fluorescent hues, and we spent an afternoon at the District 6 Museum, learning about an entire community that was wiped off the map during apartheid. We ate springbok and ostrich. We went out for a 16-course traditional African meal, during which I got sick after course #2 and had to sit there trying not to hurl while the husband gamely soldiered on with the chewing, eating enough for both of us so that we didn't appear rude.

Our second week was spent across the country in Kruger National Park. I really liked Cape Town, but honestly, if I had to plan the trip over again I would spend way more time in Kruger. People! You have to stop your car in the middle of the road because there are two rhinos napping in your lane! Seven-foot-tall ostriches cross the street in front of you! You'll be driving along the road, minding your own business, when all of a sudden you turn your head and there's a damn elephant standing there, looking right at you!

Most of the time, we explored Kruger at our own pace from the comfort of our rental car. We did, though, also go on three organized "game drives" in big safari vehicles, which were fun in their own way. The benefit of the game drives is that they are the only way to see the park at night -- guests are not allowed to self-drive in the dark. On one of our night drives, we saw a family of lions and a family of hyenas -- a member of the latter family was so forward as to come right up to the vehicle and seemingly rub his furry head against the hood, a gesture that had us mooning over its adorableness until a sudden splatter of liquid on the ground made it clear that the animal had, in fact, been nonchalantly chewing his way through the antifreeze pipe. We also participated in a guided "bush walk," a 3-hour trek on foot led by two rangers armed with rifles "for our protection." This I expected to be fraught with danger and all of its accompanying thrills -- but in reality, all we did was walk around for 3 hours and look at poop. "These are rhino droppings. What are the main differences that you notice between these and the elephant droppings we just saw?" At one point during this walk, I was even asked to hold a small pellet of impala poop in my hand. Every woman has a personal threshold. This went beyond mine.

The vacation did have its touch-and-go points. One day during our Cape Town stay, a day which I have named "The Day Where It All Went To Shit," we nearly killed ourselves learning to drive on the left side of the road, broke our camera by dropping it onto a penguin-saturated beach, and rear-ended a parked car to the amusement of many passers-by. The driving got better, the camera got fixed, but the scars -- oh, the scars remain. On another day, our bus from Cape Town to Johannesburg was cancelled (a fact that was revealed to us only after I approached the reservation counter to enquire as to why the bus appeared to be running late) and we had to schedule a last-minute flight in its place to get us to Jo'burg on time. All who know me, and most likely even those who don't, know that the words "last-minute" and "flight" don't go well together for me. And finally, after weeks of successfully guarding our cash and carrying our passports and credit card close to our skin in a money pouch for protection, we were robbed at an ATM machine on our last day in Africa. We were literally an hour away from the airport. The guys who stole our debit card were very well-choreographed and we, being on our last day of vacation, had let our guards down and walked right into it. It was a jarring and disheartening way to end our trip, but in the end it looks like we were able to cancel the card before they were able to do anything with it, so it all turned out ok.

The moral of this whole story is: go to South Africa. It is such a different world. It feels different, it smells different, I feel different from having spent time there. At the risk of going all "last day in the Real World house" on you, I will even say that I learned some things about myself from my experiences there, from the way I reacted to unfamiliar situations, from the way I had to keep reminding myself - pretty much daily - that whatever frustrating communication breakdown I was having, or whatever procedure I was not understanding, or whatever occurrence I was baffled by, was entirely my fault, as the visitor. That there are whole universes that exist outside of my comfort zone. That not only is my way not always the right way, but that there are whole countries full of people that very well may think that my way is totally batshit crazy. And that those people are right.

Just as I, also, am right, when I tell you that it is batshit crazy to hold impala poop in one's hand.

Sunday, June 12, 2005

South Africa Part 1: The Critter Gallery.

Zebras -- apparently, a theme of my vacation, as the in-flight movie on each of my four international flights was "Racing Stripes."

This is a rock dassie - looks like a fat guinea pig, but is actually the elephant's closest relative. Unlike the guinea pigs we know and love, we did not see much sister-to-sister humping going on among rock dassies. Sad, really.

Jackass penguins, named such because they bray like mules. This is a mom and two "adolescents" who are halfway through shedding their baby-fur. I call them the "Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" penguins.

Sadly, this mom and baby baboon did not pay a similar visit to our car -- but they did provide us with the opportunity to point and laugh at the scared tourists who occupied the vehicle pictured. Dude! There's a monkey on your windshield!

Come on, now. How awesome is this?