today’s lesson in parenthood: you’ll never know the fun you’ll have discussing middle eastern issues with a nine year old.
BC and i were driving to camp this morning. i didn’t have my mp3 player hooked up in the car, so we were at the mercy of the radio. i couldn’t bear to hear the mattress discounters commercial one more time, so i put on NPR. you never know what you’ll get on NPR, one of the reasons i like it so much. and lately, BC is interested in the stories she hears, so i turn it on every now and again.
once again, i was thrilled to be the parent who gets the good questions, not like BS, who gets questions like: daddy, why can’t i have candy in the morning? and: daddy, is it dessert night? nope, i have already (poorly) tackled evangelicals and abortion, homosexuality, and menstruation. why not middle eastern politics? it’s definitely a different tack than the other conversation we seem to be having this week: whether or not BC is chubby or too heavy, as the other little girls have a harder time picking her up at cheerleading.
of course, you know what i told her about that: those girls need to start lifting weights! (as if.) i also seriously told her about how its difficult when you’re a curvy and muscular tween girl. a lot of other girls haven’t started developing yet, and you feel bulky and cumbersome. i still remember thinking how huge i was in comparison to the other girls when i was her age. it was, essentially, muscular me versus the twig girls.
i worked myself into some borderline eating disorder moments because of it, and i’ll be damned if girlfriend goes down that path, too.
but back to iran, the topic most mothers and daughters are chatting about these days. well, i started out in a ::cough cough:: reaganesque tone, iran is a country in the middle east. for awhile, they were led by a US-backed ruler called a shah; i suspect he wasn’t nice to all of the people. then, some religious people kicked the shah out of the country. they took american hostages out of the US enbassy there. i still remember as a girl watching the news. as the announcer would tell you how many days the hostages were in captivity.
the president at that time, jimmy carter, tried to rescue them, but the attempt was a disaster. the day that ronald reagan became president, they released the hostages, which was great for them and obnoxious for president carter. i guess the people who took the hostages might have thought that reagan would have done something scarier to get the hostages out, so they released them.
anyway, there are a lot of very religious people there now who don’t like people who don’t follow their ways. (yes, i was very, very close to my separation of church-state speech here, but i hadn’t had coffee yet. i spared the child.) so right now, people are concerned about iran having missiles like these because if they have them, they can hit a lot more targets.
like us? she asked.
well, not us, i continued, but israel. they don’t recognize israel and don’t like israel, so people are afraid they might send those things toward israel. israel is surrounded by a lot of other countries that don’t like it, so israel would probably act pretty tough in return if iran sent missiles over.
well, that would start World War III, girlfriend said.
sometimes, i marvel at her ability to grasp things. yes, it could, i replied. but there are a lot of people who don’t want that to happen, and so people are keeping an eye on the situation.
where do they test them? she continued.
i don’t really know, honey, i replied. maybe the desert, maybe the ocean. i don’t know.
does it cause big waves in the ocean? does it hurt the fish?
there are so many questions you wish you could answer as a parent. and then of course, there are questions you have that are also sadly unanswerable.
with apologies to sting, i hope the iranians love their children, too.
girlfriend is attending cheerleader camp at a tony private school. i balked for a few years, sending her to the YMCA until i was completely fed up with the lack of supervision, the lack of a program, and the lack of working transportation. (when she and her fellow campers were stuck on the fairfax county parkway one of the many days that the Y’s bus broke down, i pretty much had had it.) i have come to the conclusion that the private school’s camp isn’t that much more expensive than the Y (they feed them lunch and snacks! they actually do what they say they will do! (i.e., counselors actually teaching them cheers! supervises them! keeps them from killing each other!)), and considering it is a bit of a higher quality program, i am okay with that. (note that girlfriend is not attending camp all summer, which helps in balancing costs around here.)
the best part, of course, is that BC’s best friend in the whole entire universe is also attending with her. she will also attend girl scout sleepaway camp with her later this month. this is incredibly cool, as these girls live in separate towns and don’t actually see each other much each year.
so yesterday, i dropped my girl off, sunscreen and all, to cheering camp. i should point out that i was one of the girls who threw items at the cheerleaders. i sneered in their general direction. in short, i was not a cheering fan, in spite of the fact that my dad was on the pep squad when he was a young man about town. [insert vision of will ferrell here.]
when i picked her up at day’s end, she was a little annoyed. all of the girls, save for her buddy, knew each other already. some attended the private school during the school year. and they were… wait for it…stuck up.
no? cheerleaders at a private school…stuck up? no way.
[snerk]
i gave her the talk. you all know the one: don’t worry about any of the other girls. do what you went there to do: learn to cheer. have fun doing that. if the girls continue to be jerks, ignore them unless they’re hurting you (in which case, involve the counselors.) etc. the same self-talk i did when those men weren’t too happy about my presence in the weight room. she was still a little nervous about going today.
fast forward to pickup time today. how was your day, i asked, nervous about the answer.
mama, she said: i was a FLYER!
come again?
for those of us who spent little time with those popular, pert ladies in our high schools, a flyer is the person who gets thrown in the air.
i was a little scared because if someone dropped me, well, that would have hurt. but they didn’t! and there was one girl who is so big, the counselors couldn’t hardly throw her, but not me!
lucky for me, i am related to none other than my middle brother larry (motto: no 1970s song is too sappy; no fiscally conservative wingnut is too crazy), dean of 1970s muzak music. one time, my darling big brother made a CD mix for me which included a crazy semblance of songs. one of them was treat her like a lady. i imagined at first the song made it on the mix simply because the lyrics are so uncomfortably sexist. see, the singer is giving his man-friends advice on the allegedly weaker sex:
All my friends had to ask me
Somethin’ they didn’t understand-a
How I get all the women
In the palms of my hand, now
And I told them, to treat her like a lad-ay
(You got-to, got-to treat her like)
Um-hum all the best you can do
(Treat her like, you got-to, got-to treat her like)
You got to treat her like a lad-ay, she’ll give into you
Ah-hum now who can see, you know what I mean?
oh, so THAT’S what those guys are doing in those classes! you know, the ones where they learn to pick up women? (oh, that’s going to give me all sorts of strange search results. all i need to use are words like naked and off we go into wacko land.) what a novel concept: listen to a woman and she might start to feel appreciated. only, silly girl, you thought he really was interested in you!
(of course, if we are the weaker sex, then how come you don’t see women going to classes learning how to pick up men?)
ahem.
anyway, back to the song. i thought at first my brother had put that song on the CD just to piss his feminist sister off. but no, he hadn’t. it’s just a song with a killer hook. no malicious intent. how it didn’t become a bigger hit, i just don’t know.
yep, i guess larry isn’t so bad. he also introduced me to the dead kennedys. [punk alert, punk alert: offensive language. don’t put on the speakers in front of the kiddies or the boss.] so sometimes, no matter how different, brothers and sister can work together and even learn from each other. maybe we never had a hit record, and maybe he’ll never see eye-to-eye with me on political issues, and maybe i’ll never forget how he used to use me as the human punching bag during 1971; but larry and i actually get along now.
just something i’ll have to point out to BC the next time she wants to put her brother in a headlock.
