Something Sexy This Way Comes

Dear, dear readers:

I have a new site launching tomorrow for An Attitude Adjustment. (It’s so sexy, it should be called A Sexy Adjustment. But that would be a different kind of blog, wouldn’t it?) While I don’t anticipate any issues with the RSS subscriptions or email subscriptions, I worry there may be a few hiccups in the transition. I really don’t want to lose you. In fact, I will lose one night’s sleep for each subscriber I no longer have. That’s not a whole year, but it’s enough to make me very cranky. I’ll sink into a depression and won’t have the energy to write or bathe or feed my kids.

Sounds horrible, doesn’t it?

So don’t let it happen. I will post first thing tomorrow on the new site, and if you don’t get the latest post in your Reader or email inbox, make sure your little fingers run, run over to anattitudeadjustment.com and re-subscribe. Seriously.

Or I’ll ask my sexy witch friends to put a curse on you.

You might think that sounds cool, but I can assure you it won’t be pretty. (They’re not really sexy. They have warts on their noses, and they’re the kinds of witches who tell you you’re destined for grand things, only to make you commit all kinds of murderous crimes. They laugh and watch you descend into madness.) So just listen to me. Do what I tell you. Save yourself!

You don’t want to miss the excitement of turning a new virtual page at An Attitude Adjustment. (And if you think it’s not a big deal, just imagine what that curse is going to do to your social life.)

Cheers!

(Can you tell I’m excited?)

A Testament to Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today we celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday and life.

One of my favorite things to teach is the Civil Rights Movement. While I am often brought to tears by the brutality of so many racist crimes in America, I am also similarly moved and inspired by the stories of nonviolent protesters, who endured beatings and humiliation in order to communicate their humanity to a culture whose history was fraught with violence and discrimination.

On the other side of that troubled past is hope and beauty.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a testament to that. While students in schools across the country stay home on this day, probably sleeping in and watching bad TV, I wish they could spend time watching and reflecting upon how far this country has come.

I hope someone says, watch this, read this. This is what true greatness is. This is the best that exists in human beings. Aspire to it, and never forget.

Tiger Mom Frenzy

I’ve been hearing a lot about “Tiger Mom” in the blogosphere and Twittosphere lately, but I’ve resisted reading the article myself. You know how when everyone else is reading something and talking about it (hint: Twilight, Girl with a Dragon Tattoo), it has a tendency to lose some of its allure? Like leftover vegetables? (I know, I’m a snob.) But I finally read the Wall Street Journal article, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior,” and understand why it has caused such an intense reaction. (The title doesn’t help, I can assure you.)

“Tiger Mom”—Amy Chua— explains that her style of strict parenting is what has helped her kids to be successful. Success, to her, is that her children had to have straight A’s, were limited in their choices of activities and career paths, and had to endure what most Westerners would call verbal abuse in their effort to become proficient in the skills their mother deemed important.

There’s probably nothing new I can add to this discussion, so I’m going to do what I always do: turn to literature.

The short story, “Two Kinds” appeared first in Amy Tan’s collection The Joy Luck Club two decades ago, and has subsequently been anthologized in English textbooks ranging from middle school to college. I have taught it to both eighth graders and college students, and people across cultures seem to identify with the plight of the narrator, Jing-mei Woo, a daughter of strict Chinese immigrants. The story begins, “My mother believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America.” So Jing-mei Woo’s mother sets her sights on a long and grueling process to figure out what kind of prodigy her daughter is.

Pretending to be Shirley Temple doesn’t work. Jing-mei can’t sing or dance very well. Nor can she memorize the capitols of various countries like a boy her mother read about in Reader’s Digest, or an entire page in the bible, or multiply large numbers in her head. Jing-mei’s spirit inevitably begins to suffer: “After seeing my mother’s disappointed face once again, something inside of me began to die. I hated the tests, the raised hopes and failed expectations.”

Finally, her mother settles on the piano as the medium through which Jing-mei’s aptitude will soar. While Jing-mei hates it, her mother brags to friends and family about her daughter’s “natural talent.” Jing-mei continues to rebel, and finally her mother tells her, “Only two kinds of daughters…those who are obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!”

I don’t want to ruin the story for you, but it doesn’t end well. As is probably obvious, Jing-mei and her mother have a strained relationship. Jing-mei is willful and independent, and while her mother tries to change her, nothing happens without heartache. In fact, it seems that Jing-mei’s mother is using Jing-mei as a measure of success for herself, trying to legitimize her place in a new culture. Instead of acknowledging her own lack of choices in her traditional household, she makes all of the choices for Jing-mei, in effect, quelling her individuality. As a result, her daughter feels unloved, like a huge disappointment to the dreams of her parents.

Amy Chua says that western parents are so anxious about their kids’ self-esteem that they are too easy on them, too coddling, and that is why their kids don’t prosper in the same way that kids in her culture do. According to her, “Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they’re not disappointed about how their kids turned out.”

But what is success, achievement? I am a Western parent, and I believe in fostering my kids’ potential and talent. I also believe that discipline, routine, and sometimes hard restrictions are necessary for my kids, but I refuse to play out my own lost dreams of success or accomplishment on my children. I will seek out my own. While different cultures have different expectations for parenting relationships, I like that mine encourages my children to find what makes them happy, even if, sometimes, that means they break away from their parents’ narrow views of success. The ends do not justify the means, and the process of finding your passion, while sometimes tumultuous, should also be an individual, insular, and gentle journey.

Jing-mei Woo didn’t become a pianist, despite her mother’s best efforts. Instead, it was because of her mother’s tactics that the piano became a harbinger of pain and disappointment rather than beauty and escape. Its largeness in their small living room served for years, until her mother’s death, as a symbol of vast emotional distance between them, the kind of intelligence her mother unfortunately never deemed important.

I like the term tiger mom, but not the way Chua uses it. My tiger rises at the threat of dangerous outside influences affecting my children, but I prefer for my kids to see my soft belly. Fear is not my parenting modus operandi.

 

Image: “Tiger” by Mauro Luna via Flickr using a Creative Commons license.

Champagne and Nostalgia

Break out the champagne! Today, I’m celebrating my one-year blogiversary.

I remember the first time I came up with the name for this blog. I was talking to my husband over dinner, my womb practically bursting with a hiccuping daughter. I set my intention that I was going to make the best of this stay-at-home motherhood thing. Writing was going to be my salvation. If I could write and do yoga, I thought, I would escape the loneliness and isolation I felt during my son’s infancy.

And I have. Today, I am so happy to have this blog as a major creative outlet. Each time I sit down to write, I endeavor to adjust my moody attitude, and it works. (A miracle!) My swirling thoughts now have a receptacle. Yes, you, dear reader. Even though you sometimes skim. (It’s okay. We all do.)

Thanks for accepting my words so graciously. Thanks, too, for hearing me, for making me part of a dynamic community. I wear the “blogger” badge with pride. (But only in polite company.)

In honor of this sacred event, I’m sharing one of my early posts from last year, when I was a plumper, more exhausted blogging neophyte.

Enjoy!

“So Much for Being Original….”

When I decided to write a parenting blog, I knew I wouldn’t be the only one. I had started a dining blog a few years ago, thinking I might become the internet version of Philly’s Craig Laban. About ten posts, a post-graduate degree, and one mortgage later, my effort became half-hearted and eating out was too expensive. Then I decided I’d blog about what I was reading. Always the critic, I could share the books I love, explain why they mean so much to me, and why others don’t match up.

But then I had a kid.

I could still read, of course, but keeping up on my reading and blogging about it seemed like a fool’s errand. I read a lot.

So when I became unemployed, it seemed manageable to blog about being a neo-mom and raising kids while those kids are sleeping, as well as all the stuff in between. I can at least keep the writing muscle active and toned if my abs and brain have turned to mush. It’s easier to write a personal blog than to execute my ideas through fiction. At least someone, somewhere will be reading this, right?

Until I discovered that every other woman who has children is writing about it, too. In fact, everyone who is anyone has opinions on parenting. Teenagers, who will rarely have thoughtful comments about any piece of literature in the American or British canon, have opinions about parenting. People who don’t have kids have opinions on childrearing. People who don’t ever, ever want to wake to the sound of their own baby crying from hunger or a dirty diaper take strong positions on how children should be raised. Needless to say, opinions about parenting are like, well…assholes.

The first parenting blog I found and enjoyed was Motherlode from the New York Times. All of the articles are intelligent and resonated with any stage of parenthood. Through that, I found Motherese, a blog by a mother and former English teacher (like me!) whose commentary and questions continually pique my interest. I admire her beautiful, precise prose, while mine veers into Virginia Woolf territory.  Through her blog, I found a few others. They Call Me Jane is not only a great title, but Jane is smart, witty and fun. Then there is Life in Pencil, not so much about parenthood as it is about personhood, but  so professional the women must be in graphic design. I would rather pull an Oedipus than try to figure out HTML. (It’s what husbands are for.)

So maybe I am not an original. But hopefully I can execute a blog that comes close to the ones I respect. With perseverance, perhaps I can find time to write and establish a community of readers who are interested in an exchange of opinions, whether they stink or not. Because while I may not have mad computer skills or abundant energy, my family and friends can all agree that I have attitude.

 

Original post, February 3, 2010.

Special Report: The News Isn’t Good for Your Health

At least not for my health. Here’s why.

Tuesday night, I had the very unusual enthusiasm to make lasagna, which is crazy, since I never cook anything that’s not directly out of the freezer or a box. (The turkey meatballs I used were from the freezer, in the effort of complete disclosure.) I was so chipper slicing mozzarella and sipping my wine and listening to NPR, until the news started to get to me. The antioxidants—the only reason I drink wine, really—weren’t helping. My husband heard me grunting and mumbling as though I were watching a football game. (Which I don’t really do, either. I get too emotional, see.) He kept asking me if I was okay, if I’d cut myself, if I’d burnt something, if I had accidentally stuffed my hand in the garbage disposal. (Told you, I don’t cook.) No. I was just angry at the news. And anger isn’t good for your health, even when it’s righteous anger.

I think I’d prefer to hear just the headlines, thank you.

I am quite picky about my news, and NPR is the only news station I listen to, because of the (usual) plethora of interesting, well-developed stories. (If you think NPR is biased, I’d like you to write a 3-5 page paper with strong logic and secondary sources. I teach thesis statements and arguments for a living, so try me. It’s not. It’s just good journalism, and people aren’t used to that these days.) Usually, the show I was listening to, All Things Considered, tries to include something a little positive to break up the monotony of tragedy, political idiocy, and potential tragedy. But not this night. Oh no. Which is why my lasagna came out tasting bitter.

Here is a list of their stories on Tuesday night:

First, a weather report on the oncoming storm. Get your bread! Get your milk! Get home, amidst the chaos of highways! Snow is coming, and that means…you guessed it. Snowpocalypse 2011! Who knows if we’ll get out ALIVE? You might have to eat your babies!

Second, a recap of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ condition. She is stable. Okay, I suppose this is good news, but it stems from bad news. That people in Arizona can legally transport and conceal guns. Which resulted in a lunatic easily walking into a parking lot and shooting lots of people.

This led to the third item, an interview with some conservative  congressman or other who was asked his response to the comments made by Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, comments which suggested that violent rhetoric, in part, caused these senseless murders. Did you know that instead of Loughner, the sheriff is now on trial? And what do you suspect this conservative politician thinks? Do we even need to ask? They’re all reading from the same teleprompter, right? He says, The shooting isn’t political. Yet the event was called Congress on Your Corner. It involved a politician who wanted to talk to her district in an effort to hear their questions and concerns. And Loughner shot her. How is this not political? Any time a politician is shot, it’s political (except if you’re bird-hunting with Dick Cheney, apparently). So just pause for a moment, think. Now, a couple of days later, the Palin Movement for Idiocy is calling anyone who questions her crosshair map and her rhetoric “irresponsible” for pointing fingers, an act in which she has just simply never partaken. She wouldn’t know “responsible” if it was written on Glenn Beck’s chalkboard. Or maybe, because it is.

Next up, Oregon’s school system is deciding kids don’t need to spell. They’ll take standardized tests online and use spell-check. Great. More generations of kids who eventually teach kids to ignore spelling rules. Knowledge of proper spelling actually inhibits kids’ writing creativity, one administrator explained. (No one told her that good writers actually respect language and words, and yes, the way they are supposed to look as well.) Besides, investing in Oregonians’ education, by extension our country’s sense of culture and democracy, is way more expensive than a software program. The take-away? Standerdised tessts our fabyoulus.

Lastly, robots are currently being made that could eventually master us and kill us. Humans won’t need to create anything anymore, because we’ll make robots do it all. (Or they’ll make us let them do it all. They’ll be stronger. And faster. And smarter.) It’s fascinating and quite amazing, really. Terminator may become a historically accurate movie that future robots watch in order to connect with their heritage.

Oy vey. This world.

Don’t even get me started on 24-hour-news channels or local news. All they’re interested in is keeping you watching until the next segment so you can stay put during commercials. It’s thriller news, not journalism. Information, commercialism, angry rants, death, commercialism, filtered information, filibusters, commercialism. Makes for a dreary world indeed.

It’s time for a news diet. Otherwise I may not make it through the winter.

Image: Photo by Matthew Bradley (@mjb) via Flickr using a Creative Commons license.

The Making of a Blog

Saturday is my one-year Blogiversary, and I’m reflecting on my new-found experience of being a blogger. I’ve come a long way, sort of.  In literal terms, I went from Blogger to WordPress. (Phew. Quite a journey. I even broke a sweat!) I went from blogspot to my own URL for some pretty pennies. (Ten whole dollars.) I probably have ten more readers now than I had then. I also learned a whole new techie vocabulary and nearly stabbed the computer in the process. (It’s only because I’m Quaker and don’t own a gun.) And as I hoped, blogging has made staying home with my kids bearable. (They’re cute kids. But the stay-at-home mom thing isn’t quite my style.)

What else have I learned, you ask? What—in public servant/school teacherspeak—is the “take away” nugget I can leave you with by the time the bell rings?

Today, I’m putting on my teacher’s glasses, pulling up the podium, lecturing with my clicker and my Powerpoint. (Truly, the best way to learn. People have seriously had out of body, revelatory experiences during Powerpoint presentations.)

With a year under my fashionable belt, I’m obviously an expert. Obviously.

So, here goes.

Slide, please.

Slide One. Writing Is a Practice.

First and foremost, blogging will help make you a better writer. I was always a decent writer. In third grade—a-hem—the creative writing teacher picked my story about a tornado as exemplary to the rest of the eight-year-olds.  You know what I did that got me such flattery? I indented paragraphs. (She’d be so darn proud if she could see me now.)

We all know that writing is a muscle, but we tend to be so caught up in end results that we don’t always think of it as a practice. Until this past year, I only practiced writing occasionally. I taught it, figured out what was wrong with everyone else’s, gorged myself on reading it, but didn’t practice often enough. This blog has helped me to write at least a couple of times a week. While it would benefit me to write every day and grapple with the fiction I aspire to, a couple of inspired blog posts a week is a start. A good start.

Slide Two. I Am Exempt from the Grammar Police.

In reference to the previous “slide,” and in acknowledgement that I am an English teacher, a sentence or clause can end in a preposition. Sometimes. As long as the right person is doing it. (Like me.) Here, I quote my husband, who quotes Winston Churchill: “Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”

So there.

Moving on.

Slide Three. The Blog Rules.

Blogs have become so ubiquitous, they’ve staked out their own territory in our brains, become their own quasi-literary genre. They’re the experimental novel, the even newer-wave version of Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach. They are the solid pop song from mainstream radio. And just like a pop song, they can get old. Stale. Frustrating. While there seem to be no inherent rules for a good blog, I believe it must adhere to certain characteristics.

A good blog post is not too long. It should be a quick read—shorter than a news article in The New York Times, longer than a facebook status update. (And sometimes, a status update and a picture can do the trick.) Once a blog starts going on too long, I feel like I’m the heartless girl in a Gary Shteyngart novel, skimming for data rather than savoring words and ideas. And what is a blog post, if not something that entertains us and gives us a little nugget of inspiration to take away? Quickly. Because the kids are crawling on me and I need to make dinner but I’d like to finish your post first. And then see what everyone else had to say. And then comment. (Believe me, I am not exempt. I’ve had some too-long blog posts recently, and I’m trying from this posture on the couch to kick myself in the but for it, because this one is getting up there, too.)

Comment on other people’s blogs, and sign your name YOUR NAME@YOUR BLOG TITLE. This is the quickest way for someone to realize you’re part of the club, and unless the blogger is wildly popular (myself excluded), she will quickly check out your site. We women love to see other women’s living rooms and dirty laundry…er, blogs.

Reply to other people’s comments to start an ongoing conversation that they’ll want to come back to, but CC them in your email reply. That means they’ll know you’ve responded. Genius, isn’t it? (Learned that one from the brilliant, always humble, Kristen at Motherese.)

Blog overload is possible. Do not endeavor to publish every day. It is far, far better a thing to make each post solid, enjoyable, even memorable. Posting each day puts undue pressure on you and your readers, who are like WTF? Another one? Some people can pull off daily posts (like newspapers), but it is hard to maintain, and not only that, causes your writing to suffer under an unnecessary deadline. (See above re: Writing every day is good. Publishing is not.)

Don’t publish too infrequently, however. People will forget you exist. And since you are a virtual personality rather than flesh and bone to them, maybe you…don’t?

?

Clean, neat pages are best. Too much stuff means your readers will have to stop what they’re doing and open a bottle of Ritalin in order to focus. And in that time, they may find something else to do. Like mop the kitchen floor, or spend quality time with their kids. (You definitely want to avoid this tragedy.)

Ads are okay, but not ads that take up such a large portion of your blog, people have to squint to find your words. A couple of un-invasive ads are fine for a blog, but once they look like confetti that has exploded onto your page, you’ve lost yourself, your meaning, the purpose for your blog and your life. You are swirling in an existential darkness, in fact….. No one can find you….. You’ve been swallowed by a black hole named Amazon and Google. You’ll even take money to tattoo a superstore’s logo on your forehead, because it means you can buy new shoes.

Don’t do it, sister!

It’s okay to make money, but not at the expense of your soul and spirit. (Shh. Don’t tell the financiers!) But more than that, don’t be a pawn. You’re too smart for that.

Figure out what your blog is about. Why do you want to do it? Is it to make money? (Ignore the previous comment, then.) To journal publicly and get therapy from the masses? (You can be sure they’ll supply it.) Do you want to merely practice your writing, find your voice? Or do you just want to form relationships with people while showing off your wicked language skills? Whichever it is, don’t lose sight of your vision, your purpose for blogging. It’s one thing that’s entirely yours, so make it you.

Don’t get too worked up in the numbers game: stats, subscriptions, comments. It’s hard to not make it a contest, but don’t make it a contest. No one is winning or losing. The internetS are too vast for that. (My numbers, of course, are quite unbelievable. I don’t know what it is, really. People just flock to my blog. Flock! If you’re here, go home! I need some peace and quiet! Stop with all this flattery and praise, pretty please!)

Slide Four. Deconstructing the Blog Rules.

What do I know? Practically nothing. The above is just my personal taste. And since all of my numbers are off-the-charts, you know how much influence I wield in this sphere.

Slide Four. Thank You.

On a more serious note, class (and friends, and family, and strangers, and facebook friends who feel obliged to read this), thank you.

Thank you for reading. The best thing about my blog is that people—you!—read it. That really pushes my instant-gratification buttons.

My little blog, started on January 15, 2010, has changed my life. It’s made me stop thinking about being a writer. Now, I am a writer.

But I’ll be more of a writer if someone will start giving me money for it.

Previous posts about blogging:

So You Want to Be a Blogger

Spaces of Our Own

About This Blog

 

Image: “Fireworks” by SJ Photography via Flickr using a Creative Commons license.

Can Marriage and Romance Coexist?

I’m beginning to wonder if romance only exists in a Bronte novel: Shadows, capes, a flailing woman in the attic and a virginal one, hands clasped, pacing downstairs. It’s so much more exciting and beautiful, after all, to fall in love on a big estate with a secret past, to traverse the moors, lamenting your loneliness. Isn’t it?

The problem with romance is that it requires mystery. And unless you’re looking for your keys or your kid’s second glove, you might not find much mystery as you cross from the kitchen, to the living room, to the bedroom. What you will find is a mess. What you will see is everything. A lot. Sometimes, too much.

Is it possible to have a romantic marriage? Consider these scenarios.

Scenario I

Before marriage: Woman says, “Your Smurf boxers are so cute.”

After marriage: Woman says, “Can you please, maybe, one beautiful day, maybe, take your boxers out of your pants and not leave them at the foot of the toilet?  Please? And you know what would really make me hot? If you put them in the hamper.”

Scenario II

Before marriage: Man says, “Come over. Let me cook for you.”

After marriage: Man says, “I’ll cook if you do the dishes….”

Scenario III

Before marriage: Man and woman cuddle and fondle each other for an hour before going upstairs. (Or staying put.)

After marriage: Woman clicks the off button on the remote control from her place in bed, yawns, and turns out the light. Man says, “Should we have sex?”

Scenario IV

Before marriage: Woman writes a long, heart-felt note expressing her deepest feelings, and seals it with a lipstick kiss.

After marriage: Woman texts, “Can you pick up tampons when you go to the store?”

Scenario V

Before marriage: Man comes in to the room, hugs woman, tells her she smells good.

After marriage: Man comes in to the room, raises his eyebrows. Picks up kid. Smells its butt. Says to other kid, “Did you poop your pants?” Looks at woman, whose head is sheepishly buried in her computer.

“You?”

Scenario VI

Before marriage: Man and woman (or boy and girl) chase each other through the park, collapsing onto a picnic blanket in a soft embrace. Woman feeds man strawberries; man pours champagne. They read poetry.

After marriage: Man and woman collapse on separate couches after playing Wii tennis, complaining that their wrists hurt. Man grumbles that the game is rigged. Woman says, “I need a beer.”

Hmmph.

Image: “Marriage” by jcoterhals via Flickr using a Creative Commons license.

Growing Pains

For the last few days, my son has been falling more easily, tripping over his knees and his feet. He’s usually a pretty balanced kid, the kind who does yoga poses like three-legged-dog on a whim, the kind who rides his scooter fast, gracefully lifting his leg between pavement strokes.

So when he starts to fall, I know that he’s growing. He no longer has control of his bones and muscles because they’re shifting. It’s a miraculous thing as a parent to be so connected to your child that you can feel and witness their literal growth with the effort to lift them into the car, to see them subtly but surely sprout after a long night’s sleep. What an unbelievable privilege it is to be present for each day of a child’s life.

But it’s curious how often children yearn to be older, grown up. Mr. B endeavored to do everything his parents did as he matured through toddlerhood, quick to move onto the sippy cup, the bed, to use the fork instead of spoon. Now, my daughter watches her brother and mimics the way he plays and eats, developing through her own best effort.

Meanwhile, we parents watch in astonishment. Don’t get me wrong—there are some things I like about my kids getting older. I am always ready and willing to eschew soupy baby food, high chairs, bottles. But this time, this moment in the cosmos, when my kids are three and one, I’d like to keep. I can already see Mr. B’s legs growing long and lean, the extra pudge around his wrists disappearing. His words get clearer, bigger. He “supposes” things; he separates sentences with “otherwise.” By the time he turns six, though, I doubt he’ll be attracting the admiring gazes of strangers who enjoy hearing his small voice. He’ll no longer open his arms to be picked up, his legs resting on my hips, his arms fierce and gentle around my neck.

Next he’ll be ten, pained by the offenses of other children.

In puberty, he’ll become more detached from me, his bedroom door closed, his goings-on secret.

I fear the last time I’ll get to hold him close is when we dance on his wedding day. I often wonder, can you physically hold your adult son tight, long, when his girlfriend or wife has taken over as the sole object of his affection, his confidence?

When these growth spurts appear, I line him up at his closet door and grab the pen from its place on his bookshelf. “Hold still…. Put your feet together…. Look straight.” In this, if nothing else, he cooperates whole-heartedly. I measure and write the date, then show him how much he’s grown. His face forms around a proud smile, soft cheeks bared. This is when he loves and trusts his body for its ease and accomplishment, its ability to impress him.

If only I could keep those dimpled hands and that tiny, sharp chin. If only his feet would stay well-padded instead of stretching into manhood.

His growing pains are mine.

Phones: The 21st Century Blankie

I’m going back to teaching in a couple of weeks, and there’s one thing I’m dreading.

Since I had my second child, I’ve taught only night or weekend classes, which means I get a good, motivated group of adults who are serious about their education. They are usually working full-time and raising families, and school is viewed as an opportunity, rather than a burden.

But this semester I’ll be teaching during the day, and that means more young adults. This is fine, of course, but I am already anticipating a difficulty: security blankets.

They’re hard and square, placed somewhere strategically viewable on their desks, and they tend to buzz throughout class.

That’s right. Phones.

I don’t meant to pick on a certain age group, because surely, we’re all at fault. But I’ve noticed the younger the generation, the more attached they seem to be to their devices, the more reluctant they are to part with them, even in an environment as important as college.

I am a victim, too. My precious poison—the iPhone—came to me for my 30th birthday. Before that, I had probably sent a total of five texts on my little flip phone. I felt quite conflicted about my new device, but over time, she’s become a friend. A close one, to be precise. We’re usually not far apart, and she knows all of my personal business. Let’s call her Tasha.

Tasha is sleek, ultra-hip, and actually quite helpful. She accompanies me in the grocery store checkout line, and saves me from the anger I might feel if I had to stare at the covers of tabloid magazines while I wait for people to slowly load their frozen vegetables onto the conveyer belt. She occupies me and my son with games once in a while. She chirps happily to receive a text message; she whizzes effectively at the opportunity to send mail. She allows me to take pictures of my kids whenever my heart desires. She even opens books and news articles and helps me keep up on my reading. She’s really quite amazing.

But sometimes, she’s overbearing. When I’m not with her, I initially feel symptoms of withdrawal, but later, her absence is liberating. It’s nice not to have to worry about her, and by extension, all the people she keeps me in contact with. I don’t have her quietly nagging me from my purse or my jacket pocket. My thoughts even delve into deeper matters. It feels healthy for her and I to spend time apart.

Over the holidays, my family went to our favorite posh yet kid-friendly restaurant for lunch, and as I looked around at all of the college students home from school, I noticed there was something they just couldn’t let go of. Mm-hmm. You guessed it. Their iPhones. And it wasn’t just the college students in monogrammed sweatshirts and Uggs who had this problem. It was the couple that tweeted and texted and facebooked and birded angrily while they waited for their food. It was the twenty-year-old with good genes (they all have them in that rich town) who laughed with her companions and fed her phone-baby with the tips of her fingers throughout the meal; but it was also her mother who sat nearby, her own 4G pet posing handsomely on the table, gazing at the artsy photographs on the brick wall, waiting to be held.

I witnessed the same thing on a plane a few months back. Everyone around me seemed to be stroking their 3Gs and 4Gs while I was reading the beginning of Gary Shteyngart’s quirky new novel, Super Sad True Love Story (if you haven’t yet, put it on your list). Every time I looked up, I was dazzled by how much his humorous mocking of attachment phone-parenting was taking place before me, in real time. The novel, set in the future—which could be next week, the book jacket warns—portrays a society where people are so attached to their devices, they hang about their necks like albatrosses. The devices are aptly called apparats (Apple, albatross, avatar, you get it), and not only can they light up at any time with messages and phone calls, but they make everyone a slave to the data frenzy of our digital age. Walk into a room and people rate your attractiveness via their apparats, acquire knowledge about your personal background, your hobbies, your financial standing. Match.com is old business when it comes to dating. Only strange people like the protagonist, Lenny Abramov, actually read books rather than just scanning for data, and this curious penchant causes disgust from those around him. As a first-class plane passenger complains to Lenny as he sits with an open book, “Duder, that thing smells like wet socks.”

Funny. But scary, too.

This might be what we’re in for if people are too afraid to put away their iPhones at the dinner table, restaurants, in a college composition class. Dear God, what might they miss? What if Angelina Jolie adopts another child and THEY’RE THE LAST TO KNOW?

I don’t think a total rejection of technology is the answer. Obviously, there are some really convenient things about technology. An iPhone is as awesome as a skyscraper, a mark of how far we’ve come since the printing press. But it seems important that we figure out a way to manage it, rather than let it dominate us.

Right now, I’m reading William Powers’ book, Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, and think that he has some great reflections on how technology can actually be freeing and invigorating, rather than a curse around our necks. But it takes effort to reject our cultural philosophy of connectedness. It takes work.

Powers points out how the more we invest in our technological connectedness, the less we know how to be alone, content with our own minds. In his own experience of college, before cell phones, he discusses that while at first it was uncomfortable, it later became “exhilarating” to be his own person, to be alone. But now, in the digital age, technology has made it difficult for his brain to function in the same way:

“At some point, I noticed that it had become hard for me to stay focused on a single task of any kind, mental or physical, without adding new ones.”

Moreover, “the more we connect, the more our thoughts lean outward. There’s a preoccupation with what’s going on ‘out there’ in the bustling otherworld, rather than ‘in here’ with yourself and those right around you. What was once exterior and faraway is now easily accessible, and this carries a sense of obligation or duty.” (46)

Are we afraid to be alone, afraid of ourselves? Have our phones given us a false security of being connected, when really, more often, they make us more disconnected from our inner workings, from the people closest to us in proximity? And are future generations in danger of inheriting a dangerous digital legacy?

I do love technology. I’m in awe of what I can now do because of it. It does have the power to connect. I have met wonderful people through blogging and Twitter and enjoy staying in touch with friends over facebook. But I also recognize the ways in which it occasionally dominates me, keeps me from doing things I may find more relaxing, introspective, enjoyable. I worry that having constant access to technology keeps me—keeps a lot of people—from fully being present in any one experience.

Perhaps it’s my own ego or sensitivity, but I’d like to assume some forms of human connection are sacred and free from buzzes and twinkling sounds and happy ringtones. Like a heart-to-heart conversation with friends, or, obviously, a college classroom.

You can be sure we’ll be reading an excerpt from Hamlet’s Blackberry to start the semester.

 

What are your thoughts?

Feature image: “My iPhone” by everyplace via Flickr using a Creative Commons license.

Poetry File: Children

Good poetry is made to be shared. A friend passed this on to me after hearing it in her yoga class, and now, I pass it on to you.

“On Children” by Khalil Gibran (an excerpt from The Prophet)

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said,
“Speak to us of Children”.
And he said:

Your children are not your children,
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but are not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and
He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
So he loves also the bow that is stable.

 

Brilliant, huh?

What do you think? Do you agree with these ideas of parenting? I like the line that we should strive to be like children, but not seek to make them like us. That in order to evolve as a culture, a community, a world, children must go their own way.

I suspect one of the hardest and yet exciting things about being a parent is the realization that a child is made to charter her own course. If only the child’s breaking away didn’t feel so sharp….

 

Poem link here.

Image: “(Child) Girl” by rcvnl via Flickr using a Creative Commons license.