political animal – Page 7

Category: political animal

girls talk

Posted on July 16, 2008 by wrekehavoc

there are some things you can’t cover up with lipstick and powder. – elvis costello

the shoe has officially dropped. ladies and gentlemen, welcome to puberty.

tonight, i am dealing with a teary, dreary young lady. she has been enduring cheerleading camp for nearly two weeks, and while at first it looked promising, i think it will knock any remaining desire to be a cheerleader out of her. not only do they make you do all sorts of exercises, but the young teen counselors have actually been rewarding girls who win different training competitions. rewarding them with pop rocks and other assorted candies, apparently.

BC has not won once.

all those years of experiences where everyone gets rewarded just for trying crashes down on your head at this age. i always wondered when that would happen, and here we are, odd girl out. its difficult to watch — girlfriend is just not terribly competitive – she really just wants to have fun. and the counselors are pitting the girls against each other.

sometimes, with disastrous results.

remember earlier in the week when BC said that one girl couldn’t be a flyer? well, BC is pretty much out of the flyer running, too. the girls can’t lift her now. one girl dropped the bomb to end all bombs: you’re really heavy, she proclaimed to my girl. you’re really heavy.

i could go fucking postal.

while i would never condone any sort of idiotic and lethal interactions, i can almost put myself into the shoes of that murderous TX cheerleader mother and see the sort of anger that could build up over time. no, i don’t give a shit whether my kid is EVER a cheerleader (i’m not a cheerleading fan, remember?) but hell yeah, i care whether my daughter starts to develop an obscenely-skewed view of herself because of what some pipsqueak twat said to her.

i know. it happened to me. not in cheerleading, but in gym class. i, too, had a curvy figure at a youngish age. most of the girls were blonde twigs with nearly non-existent boobage. if a stiff wind had blown, they would all have required nose jobs from the impact their faces would have made with the gym floor. somehow, the future stepford wives of america were accepted as the norm, and athletic, muscular me, was regarded as some sort of freak.

now, i look at pictures of myself from back then and think what the hell was this poor girl thinking? she’s gorgeous. sure, she’s not a twig. but she’s just right for who she is. she’s smart. she’s kind. she’s got a good heart. she’s even kinda cute. why did she try weight watchers when she was 9? why is she spending some days eating just fruit? why is she spending some days simply drinking water and nothing else? why is she running around the block all the time?

i spent time in college with someone very close to me who was bulimic. i wanted so very much to tell her parents, but i swore i wouldn’t. i did the very best i could at age 21: i took her to a weight management class that my college offered and tried to be her buddy, her support, her one-person builder-upper. i don’t know whether it helped her much, but eventually, it spurred her on to get professional help. (i’m glad to say that many years later, she is healthy and has conquered those devils.)

but i see the future. and that’s EXACTLY what’s afoot in this here household. mama, i’m FAT! she announced. the girls can’t lift me.

i said it before, and i’ll say it again: those girls need to get out, lift weights, and start doing something more athletic than twisting ribbons for their hair.

when i had a little girl, i vowed i would raise her without exposing her to my weight issues. in this house, i talk about exercise and eating right and striving to be healthy. not nicole richie-thin. not barbie-perfect. just be the best you and the best me that we can be, inside and out. it has been hard work, and i’m sure there are times i have not been perfect about it. but i must say that this has always been one of my parental lines in the sand: i disciplined my mouth and my behavior so as to not utter those immortal words in front of my child: do these jeans make my butt look big?

and all that hard work, all that painstaking process, is being undone by one snot-nosed little girl, a girl who has probably also gotten some weird message about herself and about bodies. where does it all end?

i was in tears, which is admittedly not a great place to be when you’re a mom and you’re trying to comfort your child as she hits a hard, brick wall of reality. honey, i pleaded, you ARE beautiful. you’re also kind, intelligent, and incredibly emotionally astute. you have no earthly idea how wonderful, how special you are. every parent i have ever encountered can’t say enough wonderful things about what a great kid you are. your brother worships you. and your father and i love you and are so very proud of the person you are.

please, please tell me you know how special you are!

blink, blink. a pause.

mommy, all those girls in high school with glasses, who are smart, they end up as dorks.

whoa, girlfriend. you’re getting personal now.

deep breath. sometimes as a parent, you have to pull strength from sources that come from seemingly out of nowhere. i called upon two: my oldest brother the doctor (BTD) and eleanor roosevelt.

honey, i said, when i went to camp, all the boys liked my friend. they didn’t like me like that; they thought i was too smart for them. it made me cry. that summer, uncle BTD had shingles, and he had to stay in bed most of the summer. i would come home from camp, and i would sit and talk with him. BTD, i cried one day after camp, i think i need to start acting dumb. none of the boys like me like they like [name deleted] because i’m too smart. they want dumb girls.

my brother, demonstrating amazing grace under probably annoying sibling pressure, looked my way. don’t you EVER start acting dumb to get liked. there will be boys one day who will appreciate you just as you are.

BC, i continued, you know i hate to admit it when either of your uncles is right, but in this case, i have to tell you: uncle BTD was right. what he said was that you shouldn’t change yourself to make someone like you, advice which has stood me in good stead even to this day. who wants to be liked by someone who doesn’t like the special things you have to offer?

she looked at me. and just cos i was smart doesn’t make me a dork, sister. she smiled, i think.

i continued, on my own personal mission. the quote i like to live by was said by eleanor roosevelt — you know, that lady who was married to a president we talked about that time? eleanor said something so wise, it still is something i think about as a grownup. her words:

no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

do you know what that means, BC?

she piped up: that no one can make you feel bad?

i augmented her thought: yes, that no one can make you feel bad about yourself unless you let them. don’t you let them, my girl. she calmed down enough to sleep.

i wonder what the morning will bring. eleanor, don’t fail me now.

i ran

Posted on July 10, 2008 by wrekehavoc

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.

of course, today, the big news is that iran continues to test more missiles. what’s iran? BC asked after hearing the scary tale.

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.

guilty pleasure monday: treat her like a lady (cornelius brothers and sister rose)

Posted on July 7, 2008 by wrekehavoc

some of you out there in cyberspace-land were not born in 1971 when today’s

guilty pleasure monday

came to the fore. so let me school you, sistahs and bruthas, on this groovy tuneage by the cornelius brothers and sister rose.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y_v_97n_9g

the cornelius brothers and sister rose, a family act from dania, fl (motto: we let 13 year old girls dressed like ‘hos like a young wreke in to watch jai alai), had their biggest hit, too late to turn back now, in 1972. the song is an utterly forgettable and annoying ditty. but treat her like a lady? admittedly, i, too, missed this one the first time around.

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.

guilty pleasure monday: american tune (paul simon)

Posted on June 30, 2008July 4, 2015 by wrekehavoc

in honor of the US’s big birthday bash later this week, i’m sharing:

guilty pleasure monday: the patriot version.

(no, we’re not listening to god bless the usa; i think that song and lee greenwood should just be launched into iraq, where the people there will surely think of something suitable to do with them both.)

american tune, a song paul simon produced sometime just after he split with partner art garfunkel, is a very simple, but moving song. i often listen to it; i imagine if woody allen had been a folky, this would have been the song he would have sung. the narrator (who allegedly wrote this, depressed after Nixon won re-election in 1972) is world-weary, wondering what’s gone wrong, a thought sadly still relevant.

what some don’t realize is that the song is an old, old tune, a re-working of a J. S. Bach chorale from St. Matthew Passion (which J. S. ripped off from Hans Leo Haßler, who wrote it as Mein Gmüth ist mir verwirret, which of course translated means my ferret is on fire. kidding on the translation, though the ripoff is true. shame on you, johann.)

this, in turn, has been reworked throughout the ages for other purposes. one of my favorite reworkings, originally sung by the weavers and unfortunately only available as a 30 second sample, is peter, paul and mary’s because all men are brothers. despite the somewhat dated lyrics (yellow, white or brown? not sure where that would put me in the color lineup. someone hadn’t heard of estee lauder’s palette then, apparently), the lyrics still grip me and ring true:

My brothers and my sisters forever hand in hand
Where chimes the bell of freedom there is my native land
My brother’s fears are my fears yellow white or brown
My sister’s tears are my tears the whole wide world around.

(see, i like me some folks tunes about brotherhood.)

which brings us to rhymin’ paul simon, who apparently followed the tradition and ripped the tune off for himself, calling it now an american tune (because apparently early folk incarnations, citing brotherhood, wouldn’t do for america: brotherhood, apparently, is not american. ripping things off and calling them american? now, that’s as american as the original colonists themselves, isn’t it?)

and his tune is personal. it’s not about the greater community of humankind, like those early, dare i say it, socialistically-minded folkies sang. it’s about how he is sad. and tired. and introspective. it fits in nicely with the me generational thinking of the 1970s, which blossomed in the 1980s and which hasn’t quite progressed in much of our populace in modern days.

ah well. happy birthday, america; rest up. we’re not always on the side of right, but we’ve done okay historically, and there’s always time to change the road we’re travelling on today. we have a lot more fight ahead of us to make the world a better place. and we have a lot more fight in us to do the right thing and make it so.

let’s roll.

We come on a ship we call the Mayflower,
We come on a ship that sailed the moon
We come at the age’s most uncertain hour
And sing the American tune
But it’s all right, its all right
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s gonna be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest,
That’s all, I’m trying to get some rest.

AMERICAN TUNE
(words by Paul Simon music by JS Bach/Haßler)
Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken,
and many times confused
And I’ve often felt forsaken,
and certainly misused.
But it’s all right, it’s all right,
I’m just weary to my bones
Still, you don’t expect to be
bright and Bon Vivant
So far away from home,
so far away from home.

I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
Don’t have a friend who feels at ease
Don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to its knees.
But it’s all right, all right,
We’ve lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we’re traveling on,
I wonder what went wrong,
I can’t help it
I wonder what went wrong.

And I dreamed I was flying.
I dreamed my soul rose unexpectedly,
and looking back down on me,
smiled reassuringly,
and I dreamed I was dying.
And far above, my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty,
drifting away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying.

We come on a ship we call the Mayflower,
We come on a ship that sailed the moon
We come at the age’s most uncertain hour
And sing the American tune
But it’s all right, its all right
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s gonna be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest,
That’s all, I’m trying to get some rest.

pump it up

Posted on June 24, 2008 by wrekehavoc

during the school year, i hit the community center gym roughly at 9:15. it’s a great time to be at the smelly cheap wonderful facility, as the pre-work exercisers are on their way and the only ones left are:

1) the senior citizens, who play some weird, cultish game that is a cross between tennis and badminton (and they’re out for blood, man. seriously.);

2) the stay-at-home moms, including the new moms who do stroller stride around the track, desperately wishing for post-birth fat removal;

3) the junior high kids at their PE class — the community center gym is their gym, so you see four or five track stars running gym teacher mandated laps, followed by the herd, followed by four or five kids who you just know are already heavy smokers;

4) the one token woman who shows up in the weight room and who looks like a tough prizefighter; and

5) the fire fighters, who, during their non-call moments, are bulking it up in the weight room.

there are a few other regulars, mostly men who i wonder about. unemployed? shift workers? serial killers? who knows. one approached me when i was new and wanted to help me work out, but i casually flashed my wedding ring and tried to pawn him off on another lady. i rarely wear my rings, as i lift weights, so that was my lucky, albeit inexperienced, day.

but it is a known experience.

this week, i have to get to the gym after 1 pm, as that’s when i am childless for a few hours. i like to work out before i hit the supermarket; working out keeps the world safe from ring-dings. so i hit the gym, precisely at 1:00. it is summer now, so there are no PE kids to dodge. and apparently, at 1:00, the seniors must be having their naps. the new moms aren’t there, either — it’s prime baby napping time, too. and no firefighters to speak of. (sigh.) even ms. prizefighter is gone.

this left me with several men, some older, some younger, in the weight room. the only girl. i brought my new weightlifting bible with me, set it down on an unused bench, and started my routine. as i picked up my barbell and started lifting, i saw an older lifter looking at me. looking angrily at me. a look that said: what the fuck is a GIRL doing here? he glared at me pretty much for the entire 40 minutes i was in the room. i just focused on my workout. i mean, maybe he was just having a crappy day? or maybe he was constipated? i dunno.

i walked over to pull on some other weights. i noticed a younger guy looking at the bench where my book was laying. shoot, have i broken some gym etiquette, i wondered. i walked over and apologized. no, he replied with a smile, i was actually just looking at your book. well, the cover with the picture of the hot chick, anyway.

i started to do some step ups on a box that was covered in astroturf. these things kill me, but i feel better in the end after doing them. in the gym mirror, i noticed another one of the younger guys, just staring at my wisconsin-sized ass from behind. was he admiring my form? was he pissed that i was taking up space in the tiny room? was there a rip in my capris? i’ll never know. i was a little creeped out, but i just kept on.

finally, i had to get a ball and do these weird-ass jackknife things. an older man somewhere in the 50-60 range, hair parted and maybe bob dobb‘s dad, walked right up to me. what the hell are you doin’? he asked, snottily.

by this point, i had pretty much had it with the men. i can understand why some women join wimpy-ass places like Curves, but when i did a trial week there, it didn’t do anything but aggravate the shit out of me and waste my time.

i got up and looked him in the eye. it’s called a prone jackknife.

he looked at me. what the hell are you doing that for?

to get stronger, i replied. i’ll show you how to do them, then why don’t you try a few?

hell, no, he replied.

then, he left me the hell alone.

no one, but no one, is kicking darla out of the he-man woman hater’s club.

wise up

Posted on June 17, 2008 by wrekehavoc

i’ve been on a cleaning and purging kick lately. i am of the opinion that the things which have been collecting around my house are weighing me down, both from a neatness perspective as well as a psychological perspective. which is why i thought this was a bit interesting.

every now and again, i have chosen to write about something which got my proverbial goat. it’s probably why i blog. i write for release, for therapy, and cos it’s so gosh-darn fun. so it was fascinating to me what i found when i cleared out my old franklin tool from the organizational cult of all cults planner. i’ll just type it verbatim. i would point out that this was written while i was a new mother of an eight month old who was struggling to balance work and home, with no one to help me except for BS.

7/29/99

Today, S [my then boss] and I met for lunch to discuss my future. She is retiring on Nov 30 and wanted to know my plans because she wanted to know whether I wanted to be recommended for her job or whether i wanted to do something else. I told her I would be pleased to manage the XXX group, that I thought very highly of my XXX colleagues, and that such a position would be instructive to me — that I would bring plenty to the position, having managed people before, but that I would learn much, too. But I also told her that I enjoyed strategic work and liked figuring out process.

She said I didn’t seem so enthusiastic about managing the team and that she really needed to lobby if I really wanted the job because someone is concerned that I leave at 4:30 each day. I told her that whenever I am needed to stay later, I have made arrangements (such as when I was covering SP2 for her a few weeks ago and had to stay late to deal with a problem it had.) And I come in earlier, which is better for my customers [who were in Europe and Asia.] She said I should come back to her on Monday and let her know what I think.

eventually, i was lateralled into another position. someone i had trained got the position. the same person who was promoted over me while i was on maternity leave because i looked so tired when i brought the baby in to visit that they didn’t think i was really coming back to work after maternity leave. i especially appreciated it when S, my direct supervisor, tried to sugarcoat the whole thing. yep. made it all better. not.

for nearly 10 years, i have been trying to clean and purge the anger i have felt about being penalized at work because i was a new mother, penalized by a company which, incidentally, won a best company to work for by working mother magazine. (what a laugh.) i did my job — and i did it well, if i may say so — and yet i was scolded for not keeping the same hours as my boss’s boss. nevermind that i was available to my customers who were in different time zones. nevermind the conference calls i had to take some evenings, while my colicky baby fussed.

i had to suck it up. for financial reasons, i had to suck it up. plain and simple. i had to feel tremendous shame and anger at being passed over — twice — because basically i was a mother. no one else in my group was a parent at that point. (i still remember when some of the women freaked out because i had to pump in the ladies room. it’s not like i could do it in my cubicle.) and every day, i had to come in with a smile, a smile which hid some incredibly venomous feelings, feelings i had to swallow in order to continue doing what i was paid to do.

i sucked it up until march 2000 when i was free at last. ironically, i was called back to the same company to work again, only to eventually leave because a new supervisor had a serious issue with my prenegotiated schedule. you know, the ironclad one i ensured i had before ever starting work there again — the one that gave me my tuesdays with my girl? it never impacted my work. and yet the new supervisor — childless, btw — could not deal with the situation. instead of talking to me about it, she yelled at my direct supervisor. for hours. fortunately, i was in a position this time to leave at will. which i did.

i am so lucky to say that i have had some amazing bosses in my life. i still communicate with several of them; i count them among my friends. and yet here i am, remembering an experience which really and truly soured me. i often wonder how many women end up in this situation?

i need to wise up and purge it. it’s done.

but sometimes, that’s easier said than done.

sad

Posted on June 14, 2008 by wrekehavoc

so very, very sad. tim russert was a part of our sunday mornings for years.

and now he’s gone.

my heart goes out to his oft-mentioned family. this was a guy you knew was a real person and a proud dad. in fact, his son had just graduated from college.

public figures die all the time. but i feel this one profoundly, if only because he was so very, very real.

dirty laundry

Posted on June 10, 2008 by wrekehavoc

how goes the struggle?

well, my inbox today brought this lovely photo:

and i thought, oh no. how could this possibly be? putting aside my ambivalence to the man as a presidential candidate, a sharp, politic person like barack obama would not possibly sanction something so incredibly horrific and disgusting on his election website, right?

it has, of course, since been taken down; and the only way to read it is via google cache.

but it made a person like me wonder: how the hell would this end up on a candidate’s site? (and, as a red sea pedestrian myself, i’m wondering: if there’s a vast tribal conspiracy, vis a vis the elders of zion, how come i am not getting my cut of the money? kidding, really kidding!!!!!! …although it is horrifying how many people — including the venerated henry ford — who believed/believe this stuff. to. this. very. day.)

apparently, the obama community blog is open to anyone. and this post is apparently cut and pasted from a site, realjewnews. ( i won’t even dignify it by linking to it, it is so full of trash.) (thanks to realclearpolitics for doing legwork on this.) apparently, having an open, interactive community is what the candidates are all about this season — former candidate clinton and mccain, too — including permitting anyone to blog on their site. so do i think obama really thinks this? i can’t imagine it, but i don’t know: i don’t live in the man’s head. but i know one thing for certain: he would never publicly say any of this tripe.

as someone who worked for a formerly large internet company for a few years; as someone with a masters in politics; and as someone who has been watching the internet for quite a few more; i personally think this is an interesting paradox. presidential candidates usually want to control their message to the nth degree. it is difficult enough to allow comments from anywhere on a political website; it is harder still to control blog entries, as they are generally larger and more noticeable.

even now, in the land of web 2.0, the behavior is still the same. non geeky people think: gee whiz, this new functionality. we MUST have it on our site! there’s little thought to the matter. consultants are paid. functionalities are launched.

and truthfully, unless you are properly staffed to deal with a web community that is potentially as large as the world, you probably have no business offering such capabilities. is there a community reporting mechanism? are there posting rules? what qualifies as offensive? (the latter is especially hard to define on a political website, methinks.)

your website is assumed to be under your control. even if obama never ever has been near a content management system or any sort of technical apparatus, his website still considered to be a mouthpiece of his campaign.

and just as official spokespersons can save your butt or get it nailed at times, your website can apparently do so, too.

war

Posted on May 24, 2008 by wrekehavoc

oh, it’s nearly the end of may, all right.

as we ate dinner tonight, we noticed a bunch of the rolling thunder folks who have once again invaded our area, as it is memorial day weekend. i ranted a bit about rolling thunder last year and i don’t think i could do much more on that topic. except maybe froth at the mouth a bit.

but make no mistake about it. i am related to four living veterans. i immensely appreciate the sacrifices that men and women in the military have made and are making even at this very moment. and it pains me especially to think about all the people in iraq, risking their lives to chase george w. bush’s tail. not to mention the people who live there who have been paying a tremendous price as well.

and all the while, 9/11 terrorists continue to roam the earth. and plot.

we have a lot of people to remember out there. the fallen heroes. the innocent victims.

the presidential candidates.

see, i must confess: for the first time in my life, i have not been thrilled with any of the presidential candidates. sure, sure: both democrats are against the war. but as someone who believes firmly in never wasting my vote, i have been struggling. i’ve read plenty of impassioned posts by people i respect. i’ve been trying to reconcile my ideals and hopes for the country with those of the candidates. i’ve been pondering whether even to vote, something unthinkable to me up until now. but there is one thing that may move my big scaredy-cat butt over to the polls:

the idea of who mccain will pick for a running mate.

i like each one less than the next.

so, perhaps it isn’t completely for the right reason, but i will not dishonor the men and women who died so that i could continue to have the ability to cast a ballot. by november, i will vote.

and i will vote for someone who will bring some sort of finish to this endless war.

centerfield

Posted on April 19, 2008 by wrekehavoc

this may come as a huge surprise to you folks out there, but i’m a terrible human being. seriously.

and it’s all because of softball.

i grew up with two older brothers; thus, it stands to reason that i had no choice but to learn how to play baseball. if i wanted to go out and play with them, that’s what they were doing. i learned to catch and throw and bat early on, and i wasn’t half bad. sadly, they didn’t let girls in little league back then, so my career was confined to the camp softball team, where i was the only girl who made first string and played on the traveling team.

i managed the boys baseball team in intermediate school, which taught me the fine art of baseball scoring. it also taught me that 13 year old boys like to put their cups over your face and yell air raid!!! thank G-d i had no idea where the cup went back then — how did i not know is a wonder unto itself, considering the aforementioned brothers. but it’s a blessing that i did not know where that plastic thingy had been or else i would have had a few projectile vomiting episodes.

when high school rolled around, i was set to be on the team when i ended up with my thumb in a cast, thanks to an overzealous gym teacher who set me in on a game of kill the guy with the ball. as the only girl, with the JV football captain, the JV basketball captain, and other athletic boys playing, i knew i had to be twice as tough; and i had the ball — i really, r e a l l y had it. i was woman, hear me ROAR! but then, too bad for me: it was pulled out of my death grip, leaving me with a thumb that actually was bent in a position that G-d had never meant it to be.

(i’ll never forget the gym teacher yelling at me: c’mon wreke, take it like a man! i thought, uhm, hello? i’m a GIRL. a girl with a thumb hanging off? fortunately, one of the boys told the teacher that i should probably see the nurse.)

a cast made pitching difficult, and after awhile, i realized i was not ready or willing to make the time commitment to softball. besides, they ran a zillion laps, and while i was a decent sprinter in my day, i was never a long-distance runner. check, please!

so fast forward to today. i have not played any softball in a long while. (i used to play with a team on the mall that played around the washington monument, but 9-11 put a major cramp on all of that anyway.) i have to live somewhat vicariously through my own children, poor things.

BC has been playing for a few years, playing being an interesting choice of words. if she’s covering third, she’ll greet you as you run to the bag and probably offer some hors d’oeuvres. she may even start drawing in the dirt with her free hand if it gets too dull out there, which it does, as few girls seem to be hitting very much yet. i cheer her on, in between bouts of hysteria as i watch jools, who could be running onto the highway, climbing onto the school rooftop, or dousing himself at the water fountain with the older boys.

but it’s hard.

i watch all the girls as they stand and wait for the ball. somehow, i think they all expect it to magically make a path precisely to their person and then leap up into their gloves. run up to the ball and get it? i think not! pay attention to the game? if i feel like it and i’m not busy looking at the dandelions.

i can see now how i had a clear advantage in this department: i had brothers, brothers who taught me that i had no choice but to either go after the damn ball or else get the hell out of the way. additionally, some of the boys on the camp team didn’t like me just because i was a girl. but i was there to play, not make friends. and i played, and sometimes, i would even get a little grudging respect, which felt very, very sweet.

as i am a woman who attended a womens college, this is going to sound odd: but i wonder sometimes whether we do ourselves a disservice through gender segregation? if i had stuck only with my girl friends, i would never have gotten tougher, and not just in sports, either. i’m not discounting at all the contributions of girl friends — lord knows, i adore mine. but at a young age, there was something of value spending time with boys.

back in my day, they segregated the school playground: boys on one side, girls on the other. in one of the very few times i ever got in trouble in my entire scholastic career, i was banished for a week from the playground because of a terrible, awful thing i did: i played with the boys on the boys’ side. i am glad that this is no longer a practice at BC’s school. i suspect she is not playing with the boys at her age, if only because she hasn’t grown up with older boys. that’s ok. as long as she has the opportunity, i can live with that.

oh, and my punishment? well, they wanted me to sit on the pavement every single day for a week. in one of the great deus ex mama moments ever, my mother, a teacher at that school, suggested to the principal that my sentence be commuted to the library, where i could at least sit and read for the week. which mercifully, i did. (she thought it was a stupid rule, too, i guess.)

i love that BC is active and playing and having fun. and the girls on her team are so sweet! but there is a part of me that wonders whether the girls are so passive on the field precisely because they are just playing with other girls.

please, G-d, tell me i’m wrong or that a change is a’comin’. i don’t think i can take another season of daisy chains.