Lunch out

In my department, we have get-togethers over lunch from time to time. Part of this is that there aren't a lot of good and not-madly-busy-at-lunch restaurants close to campus, and part of it is it's just easier for everyone to get to eat - some people have class at noon but are free at 11, some people are free at noon but are in class right up to that time, etc.

So, we are having a pre-Thanksgiving "feast" next week. No one had signed up for the main dish so I offered to buy and have a turkey smoked. (It costs money for the smoker to do it, but it's easier than me having to babysit the thing for the 7 hours or whatever it would take to cook a turkey the size we'd need. And I'm not getting up at 4 am to put a turkey in the oven. And I know enough about bacteria to not want to put it in overnight on 250* or whatever it was that one of my friends' mothers did).

So I went out at noon today and bought the turkey (and it was a good thing I did - they're already getting picked over. The local grocery stores are strange - they restock ONLY at set times, and if a shelf runs out of something, they just shrug and go "we're out" even though they have it in their storeroom).

I ran it down to one of the local smoker/barbecue places. The lady knew exactly what was needed; the turkey will be done Wednesday (it was frozen and she kindly offered to thaw it in the restaurant's huge fridge; I would not have room for it at home).

After I filled out the information she needed (contact information and such), I spied that a booth was open. So I decided it was a sign I was supposed to grab lunch there - this is a restaurant that NEVER has a booth open over the lunch hour. So I told her I was going to get lunch and she said she'd send a server out.

I ordered my usual - the half order of ribs, with a side of beans and a root beer. It came quickly. The restaurant isn't fancy - the ribs are served sitting on Wonder bread in one of those oval plastic basket things, and the beans come in a little Styrofoam cup. But the food is reasonably priced and good.

I don't eat out often for lunch any more. When I first moved down here I did nearly every week - part of it was that my apartment kitchen was so small, dark, and depressing that I cooked as little as I could manage. And part of it was I was still kind of sad and shell-shocked from having moved nearly a thousand miles away from everyone and everything I knew. And it was a little bit of comfort, that weekly lunch out.

Over time, I sort of dropped that tradition - partly because I had a couple hellacious semesters where I barely had time to EAT lunch, let along go out somewhere. And I got more adjusted to living here, happier. And I own a house now that has a nice enough kitchen - if I'm going off campus for lunch, I usually go home and throw together a salad or make scrambled eggs or heat up last night's leftovers. It's cheaper and probably better for me on a regular basis.

But once in a while, it's nice to just go out for lunch. Today it looked like a real fall day - overcast, gray, the leaves have begun to turn. It's not chilly out but you could imagine that it was, looking out a window from indoors, because of the gray sky.

And I like the little restaurant I was in - it's one of my favorite places, as much for the way it feels as for the food. It's an odd little place - a single-wide trailer that's been modded so that it's a restaurant interior. Knotty pine paneling is on all the walls and the rather low sloping ceiling. The benches are built of the same stuff. There are perhaps a dozen or fifteen booths, plus a little cart that has additional condiments (jalapenos, chopped onions, extra sauce) in case you want them. It's kind of like what a restaurant would be if a submarine designer was on the design team.

I'm sure some more sophisticated types would think it was a truly awful place, but it makes me happy.

And so I sat there in my booth (it was the last booth up against the back wall of the building, and I was sitting with my back against the back wall, so I could see the whole restaurant). And I looked around.

And this is one of the things I love about small town restaurants: the mix of people who eat there. There was a group of students from the local high school with one of their teachers (I'm guessing it was a club having a noon meeting; they seemed to be discussing plans for something). There was a local dentist and his wife. There was a group of construction workers and their wives. There were a couple banker-looking types. And there was me. Everyone eats in the same place. There's no separation of black, white, Hispanic, native American. There's less separation by socioeconomic class. It's a real cross-section. And everyone was pretty happy and polite; the waitresses walked around making sure everyone had "plenty" (that's their question: they ask you if you have "plenty") and refilling drinks.

The food there is good. Oh, it's probably not the best barbecue ever and probably isn't the best I've ever had. But it has the virtue of being good and being close. And their beans are unusually good - unlike the way most of the people in my family make beans (baked beans with lots of sugar and molasses and junk), these are JUST beans - pinto beans with a little onion and a little ham or maybe salt pork in them. And they're cooked just right - they're not hard but not mushy. I have to say I prefer the Southern way of cooking dry beans (which is more like this method) to the traditional Northern way of making baked beans (again - all that sugar. I just don't like my vegetables to be sweet, unless they're naturally sweet like winter squash).

So I ate my half order of ribs and my beans and I drank my root beer. I looked at the desserts on the menu (fried pies, cobbler, ice cream) but decided I was too full to eat anything more.

I paid and the lady up front told me she'd see me again next week (when I pick up the turkey).

It was a nice small treat. Just what I needed today.

"Real ID" can eff off

So. My driver's license expires in February. I am thinking about this NOW, because of the "we want to be really, really sure you're not a terrorist, or if you are, that you're good at faking documents" act.

Yet another way of generating headaches for the law-abiding U.S. citizen, and something that people who aren't supposed to be here will probably have some way of circumventing.

What I need to renew my license is this:

1. The old license
2. My birth certificate (Which I will be picking up from my parents when I visit at Thanksgiving)
3. Proof of Social Security number
4. Documentation of where I live ("Such as a utility bill")
5. Proof of lawful entry/residency (the Hell? I was born here. Does this not apply to me? Please say that this does not apply to me. I have no way to prove my 'right' to be here, outside of my birth certificate, my tax returns, and my property tax bills)

#3 is going to be a problem. I cannot find my SS card. No, it's not a "I think an illegal alien has it" issue; it's a "It's buried deep in one of the approximately 1582 file folders I have stashed in my home office or it's in my safety deposit box and if it's not in my safety deposit box there is no way on God's green Earth I am digging through every-damn-one of those folders until I find it."

Has anyone got their card replaced? The government website makes it sound laughably easy - fill out a form and bring clear proof of who you are. But that makes me suspicious - it is probably laughably easy for some people, but if I walked in there I'd be willing to bet they'd give me the 3rd degree and then deny me.

I don't know whether to begin searching for the dang card and hope I find it, or to take my chances reapplying (I don't even KNOW where the nearest local SS office is.)

I might be able to track down that thing the government sends me every year that tells me how much money is purportedly in that (non-existent) "lockbox" for me. I wonder if that would count. Or if I could get a notarized statement from my HR department with the number on it and a verification that "Yes, this woman is who she claims to be."

I just feel like - I should NOT have to be doing this, not at this stage of the game. It especially irks me that I know there are going to be criminals - people flying under the radar - who will have faked documents or will pay off the right functionary and breeze right through, while I waste spend an entire Saturday afternoon searching for a 1.5" by 2.5" piece of cardstock with some blue ink on it because it's supposedly necessary for me to renew the license I've had for 20-some years.

Dammit.

(Oh, and incidentally? To actually get that list of stuff, know where I had to go? The Snopes site! I cannot easily find a .gov page that lists it! All the other links that come up are either government sites justifying how this is Necessary and Important and Really Not That Big A Hassle At All, or conspiracy-theorist sites that are saying, "This is the first step! Next step is that they ear-tag us all like cattle!"

But do you know how much it IRRITATES me that I have to go to an urban-legends site for IMPORTANT information that I NEED to have because of something the GOVERNMENT is changing?)

Oh - and they were reporting on it on the local news, but I missed that story because that was the VERY MOMENT my youth group co-leader called up to let me know that there's no one signed up to provide food for the kids for dinner tonight. Sigh. So I guess it's ricki-foots-the-bill-for-pizza again.

a realization

For the longest time, I have been bugged when people "flaunt" their green-ness. I mean, the people who walk around being kind of ostentatious about saving energy or not using resources or stuff like that.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm all for conservation. There's a lot of stuff I do myself. But I did not buy a canvas sack emblazoned "This Is Not A Plastic Bag" and take it to the grocery and insist that the sacker put all my groceries in there, as I wave it around casually for other people to see.

And it hit me this morning why that behavior bugs me.

It's a parallel, in my mind at least, of this:

"When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.

It's also like the comment about "when you fast, don't go around all longfaced about how horrible you feel, that's just showing off" that is made elsewhere in the New Testament.

The people I deal with who are selfconsciously green, though, tend to brag about it, rather than walking around all sad-faced. It's like "Gee, I don't even MISS using hot water!" or stuff like that. And I kind of roll my eyes and go, whatever.

I mean - when I was a kid, my dad was hollering at us (this was during the energy crisis of the 70s) to turn off lights in rooms when we left them, and to turn off the water while we were brushing our teeth, stuff like that - a lot of the little ingrained habits that came out of my dad's frugality are stuff that some people tout as "the new green."

And it does kind of bug me when people play "who drives the fewest miles" poker. It's not useful or helpful and it does kind of create irritation in others.

annual review

We have to do these "development plans" every year that explain what we did in the last year. And then we have to go in and talk it over with our department chairs (and, if we disagree on the 'ratings,' argue it out.)

There are four rating categories at my university, which are oddly like the pre-letter-grade grades my elementary school used to give out:

needs improvement
satisfactory
commendable
outstanding.

So I went in today. My department chair asked me what I thought I deserved. (In another instance, I might hate that tactic, but I know she figures we know our own abilities better than she does). I reminded her that I presented a paper at an international conference this summer - so that rates an "outstanding" in scholarship (well, it does. That's the established standard). She agreed with me and wrote that down. And I remarked that I had been a committee-chair in a state organization this past year, and she agreed that that deserved Commendable.

What about teaching? she asked me.

Well...um. I began. I really haven't being doing anything innovative or wonderful or special (and remember, I'm still hurting from those bad tests). I guess a 'satisfactory' I said, and started to explain more why.

She stopped me.

No, she said. You deserve a "commendable." I'm giving you a "commendable."

I like that my department chair has more faith in me than I have in myself.

I think I've said before that I tend to be hyperactively self-critical - I can see all the areas where I've screwed up generally before I see the areas where I did okay (or better than okay.) Sometimes it helps to have someone go, "No, ricki, you're better than you think you are."

I also like my department chair. She's very low-key, she doesn't believe in berating people to do BETTER or do MORE or to have to resort to Powerpoints of dancing ducks and explosions to get student interest. She's more concerned about good scholarship and good standards than she is about flash and surface stuff.

Better

Thanks, Cullen. I know it's not my fault but one of the longstanding edumacational paradigms is that if a student fails, you first look to blame the teacher.

The fact is, looking back over the exams - most of the students in the class scored respectably (70s and 80s, and this is not an easy class). It was just the bad-attitude guys that really bombed.

Still, since I gave them the "left back at Howard Johnson's" lecture that MY stats teacher gave me - basically, he used the metaphor of a family trip where someone who had been sleeping in the car goes to the restroom and gets left behind because they didn't tell anyone they were going to the restroom - I'm going to take a day and review the stuff that was missed. Or at least the stuff that was badly missed.

What aggravates me is that I have been really up-front about "do you need me to go over this again?" or "Do you want me to work another example?" and none of them ever ask for one. (Once in a while one of the other students will say, "I didn't quite get that, can you go over it again?" and I do. Or they come to my office hours.)

So, whatever.

It does sort of frustrate me that it seems that people are choosing leisure over responsibility because in the coming month, the run-up to Christmas, I'd love to take piles of time and bake cookies and make candy and sew up homemade decorations and all that crazy Martha Stewart stuff. But I don't - or rather, I set aside one Saturday to bake cookies and that's it - because I know I need to spend my time on other things.

I think that's actually the main lesson of adulthood: Sometimes what you need to do and what you want to do do not coincide, and you should usually choose doing what you need to do.

And I think it's again this stuck-in-adolescence problem - so many kids, their parents bail them out at the first sign of trouble. Or their parents go, "Oh, that's okay, you can do your chores later..." because they want to be their kid's friend.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I do think there's a tie-in to the whole loss of adulthood thing.

I'm just still gobsmacked at the guy who thought he could claim he "read the date wrong" that it was due, after I announced it three times in class and had it in big bold letters on top of the exam.

rant

You've been warned.

I gave a take-home exam in my stats class last week. The students had 10 DAYS to complete that mother, including 2 entire weekends. I collected the exams today.

I had two come to me late - even though, on the top, it said in big huge letters the time and date it was due. I had one person claim to have "misread" the due-in time.

Whatever, bro.

But what is making me angry - and sad - and angry again - is that people have left whole entire sections BLANK. They didn't even try. I give a few pity-points if people at least calculate the mean and standard deviation on something even if they can't do the test. And I know it wasn't an impossible test because I have people who successfully completed it.

I don't know whether:
a. I can't teach the people who are bombing

or

b. They just don't give a $#)(*%.

(Upon reflection: most of them are people who were absent for more than one day. And I have emphasized to no end how important attendance is - I work through all the examples of the tests they need to know, I take questions, I go over the homework - I even do all the calculations that were in the homework I hand back on the board, so if people messed up, they should be able to figure out the issue).

Part of it, I suspect, is that it's hunting season here. The people who are bombing are the big hunters in my class. So I suppose it might be that they couldn't be arsed to take a couple hours on a weekend because they were out in the deer woods.

And you know, I support people's right to hunt and all, but - you are a college student. You are trying to get a degree. This class is required for graduation with the degree you want. You are, to put it bluntly, effing up. And you know you are effing up - you have done poorly on previous homework.

I have 10 hours of office hours a week.

There is no excuse for you not getting help: you know you are having trouble. I have asked for questions in class. I have made it abundantly clear (I hope) that I expect people to come in on my office hours if they have difficulty - there is no official lab time for this class, so I consider people coming in for one-on-one help to take the place of a lab.

The thing is, I know I'm going to be met with this wall of resentment when I hand the tests back Wednesday: "You made the test too hard. You never explained this to us. It wasn't in the book. It wasn't in my notes. This class should be easier." blah, blah, blah.

You know what? There are a HELLA lot of things I'd rather be doing than grading homework/tests/writing class prep/trying to figure out new and different ways to explain things/write homework/write and grade "remedial" homework for the stuff you effed up before. But it is my RESPONSIBILITY to teach you. So I put off doing things I want to do (even things I need to do, like laundry) to take that RESPONSIBILITY.

Don't hand in a half-blank test and whine that you didn't have enough time to complete it, and that I never taught that stuff anyhow. Neither of those statements is true.

Grr.

"At their level"

I had meetings to travel to earlier this week. On the way, I flipped through the various radio stations (most of the stations around here, like the lady at the honky-tonk in The Blues Brothers, make the proud claim that "We play BOTH kinds of music! Country AND Western!").

I hit on a talk station, which was preferable to some of the things.

And an ad came on that made me think - and I'm still thinking about it. It was apparently one of those megachurches, where they have a group for everyone and a wide range of social activities. And one of the things the announcer said kind of bugged me. He made a comment along the lines of, "And we have groups for youth, too - we meet them on their own level with exciting, drama-based lessons and video game stations."

First of all: what kind of video games? Do they just have ordinary but maybe "family friendly" games like Tetris and Guitar Hero, or do they have special Youth Group video games, like "David's Target Practice" or "Spot the Pharisee"?

And second - this raises an issue that frankly bugs me. Not just about churches, but also about education and society at large.

Yes, I understand that sometimes you need to meet youth or the unchurched or students or whomever where they are. But you damn well better not LEAVE them there! I wonder about the kind of faith a kid might develop if he is only ever exposed to fun song-and-dance type lessons, or video games, or all that kind of entertainment-oriented stuff. What happens when he hits a difficult point in his life? (I guess what I'm thinking here: don't coddle them - just like you don't water your lawn a little bit every day in a dry climate, because it then never develops the deep roots that can sustain it when there's a period when you can't or are not permitted to water it, you don't always do the happy-clappy stuff so that when the person hits the inevitable pain in life, they don't recoil from the church and think it is a place that cannot help them, because "it's just for happy people.")

As the saying goes: we need to do the hard things.

And I am concerned about that. It seems so much any more there's a push to shield people - especially young people and students - so they are kept as long as possible from having to do the hard things. And you know what? Just as a muscle becomes soft and weak by not being exercised, I think a person's moral capacity can become soft and weak when they are kept from the normal difficulties in life (or, worse, when they are shielded from the consequences of their actions).

I hear this a lot from educators: "Make it fun!" or "Have a student-centered classroom!" (which usually actually means: show movies, allow discussion extraneous to the topic at hand, throw softball test questions at them). And you know what?

I am not here to make the students like me, my subject, or the class. I am here to help them gain the skills and knowledge they need to be productive and well-rounded citizens.

Especially in the majors classes - I do not think I should have to "sell" the subject. If a student majoring in Biology doesn't love biology, thinks it's too hard or stupid or boring or not worthwhile or feels they shouldn't have to work for their degree, they need to be in another major. Not in mine.

I do try to make the subjects interesting - I bring in real-world examples, if I can come up with a funny anecdote to illustrate my point, I use it. Or I do activities appropriate to the topic. (I work very hard to choose lab activities that reinforce and mesh with what they're learning in lecture).

Now, don't get me wrong - not everyone loves every subject in their field equally well. That's why people specialize. But I've had a few students who hated ALL of their classes - who griped about all their professors, about all the projects they were doing. They just seemed miserable - there was no spark of enjoyment there, no sense of "This is something I want to be doing."

Either they need some kind of intervention (chemical or talk-therapy, because they are suffering from depression), or they need to look for a new career. I find it hard to deal with people who are ALWAYS sour and are ALWAYS bored with everything.

And I refuse to dumb down my classes - to take out some of the much-complained-about math in my Ecology class, or stop teaching certain topics in general biology, or not do "all that chemistry" in Soils. Because that is stuff a person who has had a class in that field needs to know! I do not want graduates to go out from our department with our name on their diplomas, and then have the employers later go, "Man, it was a mistake hiring someone from THAT school. Let's never do that again."

I don't know. I wonder at people who look at every challenge they are faced with and automatically shut down - automatically go "this is too hard" and don't even try. Or worse, who go running to someone to try to intervene for them and get a stop put to the hard thing.

Actually, the most satisfying things I've ever done in my life have been the hardest. Dealing with essentially being asked to leave the first graduate program I was in (I was partly sabotaged by a particular faculty member, but I didn't find that out until later - it was the first time I had "failed" at a big thing in my life and it took a lot of soul-searching to deal with it). Doing the research for and writing my dissertation. Moving a thousand miles away from family to a town I'd never heard of before I sent the job application in and starting to teach from scratch in my first real job ever. Revitalizing a youth group after a congregational split, when I had never worked with anyone under 18. Heading a campus committee where there was a lot of in-fighting and a lot of things done that really weren't with the students' best interests at heart, and really pushing the group to consider the students' best interests. (And I think I succeeded on that last one. I saw one of my former committee members a few weeks ago - normally we never have contact as we're in different schools, let alone different departments, and he commented on my leadership of the committee and how he appreciated that "you always put what was best for the students first, even if it wasn't popular with everyone." And that committee chairmanship was one of the hardest things I've done, because I HATE conflict and would much rather just not say anything, compromise, allow people to run over me. But there are some things that are just NOT right, and in that case, I guess I can find the guts to step up and say, "No, that is not right. We need to do it this way.")

And you know? I look back on all the hard things and I go, "You know? I'm stronger than I think I am." And I think that's an important lesson. Now when I face something difficult, I can say to myself, "You survived these things in the past, you can survive this."

It's by doing the hard things that I know I can do them. I know that sounds kind of silly and tautological, but it's easy to get stuck in the loop of "this is too HARD. I can't DO THIS." and never move out of it.

And it's the same way with faith. I am not satisfied that my youth group kids can merely parrot the Ten Commandments back to me; what I want is for them to be able to explain why they are important, why THAT ten, and how the commandments apply to their everyday lives.

And you know what? When you expect a lot of people, sometimes they rise to that. Oh, there are weeks when I'm met by blank stares or by responses that show they didn't "get" the question. But other times they really have good insights, and they ask good pointed questions about things. Or they share things that happened during the week and once and a while I get the feeling of "Yes! Some of this IS sinking in!"

And I think because I make it challenging - I make the lessons more intellectual or more scriptural than what a lot of my friends who lead youth groups do - I think the kids respond to that. I do think young people want challenges...or at least they want them until they hit a point where they've been so coddled for so long that their ability to work hard or think hard has atrophied.

I think the other thing is that there's an awful fear of failure, and a strong desire to protect kids from it.

Now, don't get me wrong: I HATE failing at stuff. Hate it tremendously. When I do screw up and something I try fails, I either go home and cry about it for a day or two (if it's a big thing) or stomp around and cuss for an hour or two (if it's a little thing). But at the end of that time, I kind of square my shoulders and go, "Okay. THAT didn't work. Now what do I try?" And I try again.

Failure sucks but it can also be useful, in the sense of that you know one way that doesn't work.

And sometimes failure plays a more corrective role. It teaches us not to do that thing again.

(Though I guess not everyone learns. We had to become much more anal-retentive about kids wearing their safety glasses in lab because a girl in one class [not my class] broke a pipette and got glass in her eye [doctors were able to remove it without any damage]. But you know what? The prof whose class she was in when it happened - and whose class she is in again this semester - says that of all the people in the class, she is the one she has to harp on the most to wear her safety goggles. That blows my mind, that she wouldn't be the FIRST one in the class to have them on every day.)

So, it worries me when people talk about "you need to meet them at their level" or "you need to interact with them at their level" or, worst, "you need to bring it down to their level." Okay, maybe sometimes you need to start where people are - but you also need to bring them up to another level. You need to install some aspiration in people. It's because of people's aspirations - because of people saying "Where we are now is not good enough" that we have things like antibiotics and the polio vaccine and electricity and computers and clean water and all the blessings of the modern world...it's why we're not still living in the trees and having to spend 15 hours a day hunting and gathering food.

And you know? Having aspirations and not just saying, "oh, well, where we are now isn't great but it's too much trouble to try for more, and anyway we might fail" has worked awfully well for us in the past. I'd hate to see "let's just meet people where they are and not take them out of their comfort zone, because that might hurt their feelings" become the new paradigm of life.

dancing cat

hahahaha. This one reminds me of one of the first LOLcat pictures I ever saw:



What makes me laugh about that one is that I used to think I was the only person who remembered the Merrie Melodies cartoon that it referenced. One of the things I love about the Internet is that just about any weird little fact you know - or any odd little thing you cherish - there is someone else out there who knows it or cherishes it, too, and the Internet gives you a chance to find them.

(I loved those old, old Merrie Melodies when I was a kid. They seemed so distant somehow - they made references to movie stars or singers or current events I had only read about in history books. The "I like to sing-a" bit is from one with a little owl in it ("Owl Jolson"?) who wants to sing jazz, but his Old-Country parents want him to sing "Drink to me only with thine eyes" for the school talent show.

It's funny, when I think about it, but a lot of what I know about attitudes and pop culture of the 30s and 40s came FROM watching the old Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes. I learned what a war bond was after seeing Bugs Bunny exhort people to buy them in some old cartoon.

I wonder what people in 2070 will learn [or think they have learned] about today's culture from watching the cartoons made now. I have to say I think they will learn more from shows like "South Park" than they will from the cartoons made for kids - many of which seem to have as their main frame of reference, "Collect all the toys made as tie-ins for this show.")

Halowe'en wrap-up

I didn't get many trick or treaters last night. I think it was partly because I was (grr) the ONLY HOUSE ON MY BLOCK handing out candy. (People? It's one night a year. Can you make an effort?)

I did get to see some cute and funny costumes though.

Best costume, older-kid division: a girl dressed up (apparently a homemade costume) as a S'more. (I had to ask her what she was). She was in a white sweatsuit, with a brown pillow strapped to her front (as the chocolate) and then sandwich-board-style cardboard pieces with lines and dots on them to represent the graham crackers.

There were also a lot of tweens dressed as, I guess, popstars (One of my friends who has kids says a popstar character named Hannah Montana is big this year, but I don't know who that is, so the girls could have been her and I didn't realize it). Big big sunglasses and bell-bottomed jeans. (Maybe they were going as Hippies. I don't know).

There were also a lot of - for lack of a better term - glamour witches. I don't mean "sexy" witches - I will say I didn't see a single inappropriate costume (at least, inappropriate in that way) last night. No, these girls had glitter on their pointy hats and makeup on and their witches dresses either had glitter or lacy edges on the sleeves and hem or both. It was sort of a cute look.

Best costumes, tiny kid division:

one little boy, I think he was about 3, dressed up as a wee tiny ninja. It was so funny. I think he was the best, but the tiny little boy (so small his mom had to help him up my front steps) dressed as a skeleton (in a very detailed costume: the "bones" were actually 3-d molded rubber instead of just painted on the bodysuit, and then he had white make-up on to make the skull) was a close second.

There were also a couple of tiny Disney Princesses. Or maybe a Princess and a Tinkerbell. I couldn't tell too well with the tinier girl what she was.

There was also a little girl dressed as a princess (her brother was a little Jack Sparrow) who had their dog with them - a little French bulldog - and he was wearing a skeleton suit! That made me laugh, too.

There were a few gory costumes - or sort of half-hearted gory costumes, where the kids had sort of runny makeup and splashed a little fake blood on a t-shirt. I personally find those less amusing than the all-out costumes, like the little kids who wanted to be a perfect princess or a perfect pirate or something.

No Harry Potter costumes this year. For the past few years I got at least one or two.

Also no college-kids trick-or-treating for canned goods for the local food pantry. Usually that happens too, and I was prepared for it.

I have to say

Something I am very tired of in our culture is the apparent increasing need to air one's dirty laundry in public.

This morning, I stayed home a little later than usual - I don't teach on Thursday, and with the new "designated faculty parking" I don't have to get in at the crack of 7 am in order to be able to park within a half-mile of my building any more. And I had to do some packing for some meetings I'm going to this weekend.

I had had the local NBC affiliate morning news (which is marginally less stupid than the local CBS affiliate's; the NBC folks have one of the "morning mouths" from one of the local radio stations in regularly to vent his poorly-formed opinions or make drooling comments about the hottie-of-the-moment, but the CBS affiliate devotes an inordinate about of time to the "Pathologically Worried Mom's Corner" or to the "Relationship Advice that if you Don't Know it Already, You Probably Don't Deserve to Be In a Relationship." And they tend to have fewer actual, you know, NEWS stories).

Anyway...the network morning show (ummmmm...Today? Is that the NBC one? I'm usually at my desk by 7 am so I kind of forget) was on, and Paul McCartney's most recent ex was all over the screen - I heard a soundbite about how she was apparently being vilified in the press and really really wanted it to stop.

And you know? I do not care. I am not interested. Okay, maybe the press IS being unfair to her - but I have no grounds to evaluate it as I do not live in Britain and do not read their newspapers. And if she is being vilified as bitchy or unpleasant or a gold-digger, wouldn't it be best to kind of fade from sight, and let the press latch on to the next convenient target? Or something?

I mean, it's kind of like Larry Craig in a way: he got caught very possibly doing something he should not have been doing. But instead of starting off issuing a simple denial and then refusing to comment, he's just been all over the place. It's become a joke.

I was raised to believe that the best thing to do when you're in trouble is to quietly fess up, fix what can be fixed, and then shut up about it.

People seem to have forgotten the shut up part.

and the "quietly" part.

and the "fix" part, at least a lot of the time.

But I don't know...If I were married to some famous guy and we decided it wasn't working out, I'd probably ask for a settlement big enough to buy a very small house far, far out in the country (if I didn't have enough money of my own, and if there was some reasonable reason for me to ask for a settlement - like I put my own career and earning-potential on hold to help him, or something) and go there and just hang out until the next flavor of the month came along.

That said: why do there even have to be flavors-of-the-month on what is ostensibly "serious" or "semi-serious" news? Don't we have an "E" network that's devoted to this stuff? And three- yes, three- of the local affiliates here run "Entertainment Tonight" during that break between early-local news and prime time. So it's not like we're starved of our celebutainment.

But I look at all of the stories about Britney, about Craig, about what's-her-butt-McCartney's-ex and I wonder if it's kind of a bread-and-circuses thing - something we're being fed to keep us distracted from what's really going on in the world.

Hallowe'en

I don't do a lot, as an adult, for Hallowe'en. (I can't dress up today, anyway - I have a field lab this afternoon and anything remotely costumey would be uncomfortable or unsafe. I AM wearing a t-shirt with a bat on it, though).

I don't know why. I guess I always took Hallowe'en to be a kids holiday. (Don't get me wrong, here - I'm not saying you're stupid if you celebrate it or go all-out as an adult, it's just not something I do). I think part of it is I'm so busy this time of the semester - it's Midterms and it's also the time when I'm trying to wrap up research - that it just gets away from me.

I do do one thing: hand out candy to any kids who come trick or treating. I enjoy that.

Two really cute/memorable costumes from years past:

1. a very tiny little girl - probably 2 or 3 - in a homemade (really detailed - probably made by Grandma) Tweety Bird costume. So cute.

2. Two little boys, very likely twins, dressed in identical army-fatigue suits. (They were probably 6 or 7). When I gave them their candy, they stood at attention (military style!) and said, in unison, "Thank you, ma'am!" That was so cute it almost killed me.

This year, my coleader and I decided to cancel Youth Group for the week - so the younger kids could go out trick or treating and so the older kids could go to a "teen event" (a chaperoned dance) tonight. (And I have to admit I'm glad to have the chance to hand out candy. I ran out the day after we decided that and bought a big big bag of little Twix bars, and a couple bags of snack-packs of mini oreos, and a big big bag of Kit Kats. I like to give out the "good" candy - I hope these qualify as "good" in the eyes of the kids trick or treating)

One thing that bugs me? All of these places - malls and things and even, I think, the local hospital - are advertising "Come with your kids and trick or treat at our place. It is a 'safe and fun' alternative!"

Um, yeah. I'm kind of insulted by that "safe." It almost seems to imply that people's neighbors are carefully inserting pins into the Snickers bars or injecting peanut butter cups with LSD or something. I suppose in some towns, people really DON'T know their neighbors well enough, but it bugs me. It bugs me that malls and places are playing on the loss-of-trust of other people, and that they're probably figuring, "If we get the moms and dads in with the kids trick-or-treating, we will probably be able to sell them something."

As for "fun" - well, when I was a kid and saw E.T. and saw the kids trick-or-treating in the daylight, and my mom explained to me that in some communities they were worried enough about safety to do that, I thought "what a rip." I suspect there are still enough kids - or at least I hope there are still enough kids, in this bubble-wrapped society we have - who feel like "What a rip" when they go trick or treating at the mall.

Going trick or treating at night to people's houses was FUN. It was fun because it felt a teeny tiny bit naughty - you were ASKING for candy, and you were permitted to do that! And it was at night - my parents would let my brother and me go out to look at the stars, or catch fireflies, or stuff, but the rule is we had to stay in the yard (or, if we were playing flashlight tag with the kids across the street, stay in their yard). We weren't allowed to roam the neighborhood. And with trick or treating, we DID roam - we probably walked well over a mile, all the way up to the part of the neighborhood we normally never went, because it was "too far," and, except for Lisa E., neither of us had friends who lived out that way.

And you were in costume. To be out, at night, in costume, and asking for candy was pretty intoxicating to a normally rule-following child like me. It felt like I was being BAD. But it was a type of BAD I was allowed to get away with.

So, I don't know - but to me, trick or treating at a mall (or in the downtown of a town, like they do here) would feel like a very poor substitute.

And, of course, living where I live, there are people who don't like Hallowe'en. Who say it's a day for the devil. Who talk about the paganism rampant on this day.

And you know? I just shrug. Sure, there are pagan associations to the day - it's Samhain, in the old Celtic calendar - but there are also Christian associations - it's All Hallow's Eve, the day before All Saint's Day.

And the way I look at it? It's a day to laugh at what scares you. And isn't laughing at what might ordinarily scare you (like, death) something you might want to do, as a Christian?

I've also heard a few rumblings from other quarters - that it's a "wasteful" day, because of all the candy bought (all those wrappers, going to the landfill!) and the costumes - far better, they say, to make a costume out of old clothes and give out unwrapped treats (but then, that contradicts the "safe" mantra above).

I've also heard people talk about the caloric impact of this day - all that candy, all that sugar. Let the kids have a piece or two and then take the rest away from them. (But I will say I also heard a nutritionist speaking last week who said: "It's only one day out of the year. Let the kids have the candy. Kids have to have fun, sometimes." Which seems a more sane response, to me.)

I don't know. I wonder sometimes if in the future we will just have amorphous "holiday days" rather than actual, dedicated holidays, because it seems no matter what, someone gets offended by the observances.

When I was a kid in school, we got to bring out costumes to school on Hallowe'en. In the afternoon, after lunch, we changed into them, and had a parade around the school grounds. Lots of mothers would show up to take pictures (my mom has pictures of both me and my brother - I was usually some kind of animal, my brother was, depending on the year, a cowboy or a robot or a sports star or a rock star). Then we had a party - we got Hi-C punch (Hi-C punch seemed to be a fixture of school parties) and orange-frosted chocolate cupcakes and we got to be in the classrooms in our costumes. And then we went home, and after dinner, went out trick-or-treating.

It sounds like kind of a small thing, now, but it was something that loomed large in the school year - a party (we got to have 3 parties: Hallowe'en, a Christmas-but-we're-not-calling-it-that party before the Christmas break, and a Valentine's day party). It WAS a big deal - no classes in the afternoon, Hi-C punch, cupcakes, a chance to talk with your friends instead of learning about fractions or the Civil War.

I hope kids today get the chance to do that kind of stuff. I think having things to look forward to - even small things - is important. And I also think being able to enjoy and appreciate little things like being able to wear a costume in class and have a cup of Hi-C punch is also important.

funny PSAs

A lot of PSAs, I don't care too much for. But there are a series running now that I think make their point effectively. A seedy looking guy walks up to someone in a coffee shop, shows him a rumpled piece of paper, and begins the spiel that he's got ALLLLLLL this money, he just needs a bit of assistance getting it out of his country, and the person who helps him will get a share.

Or, a punk-looking teenager is shown telling people they've won the lottery.

Of course, in both cases, the person is brushed off by their potential victim...because who's foolish enough to fall for such a thing?

But obviously people are, when it comes over the internet. ("If it's on the Internet, it must be true"?)

I've probably gotten 500 of those Nigerian-scam e-mails - some claim to be the widow of a highly-placed military official. Some claim to be some kind of deposed prince. Once, one claimed to be from the illegitimate son of Saddam Hussein. Most recently, I got one from someone claiming to be a former British MP who had money in a big settlement.

Of course they're all bogus. (And these scams existed before the widespread nature of the internet - both my father and my graduate advisor received LETTERS - actual, physical letters on that blue air-mail paper - from someone in Nigeria claiming to have a lot of money for them. (My dad turned his in to the Post Office suggesting they investigate it as mail fraud. My graduate advisor was almost considering responding until those of us in his lab convinced him that it was a scam).

But I guess some people must believe them - or else they'd figure out a new tactic.

One of the things I have to admit I find a little interesting is the evolution of "phishing" or other scam techniques...of course there are the phony bank-notice ones (I get ones from banks I didn't even know existed). I've also received a few claiming to be from the IRS, and either claiming I owed more money and was IN BIG TROUBLE unless I sent them my bank account number post-haste (shyeah) or that I was owed a big refund. (Incidentally - both of these I checked, just to be 100% sure. Seeing as the full-header showed them supposedly originating in France, I figured it wasn't even worth my sending them to the real IRS - they probably get swamped with that stuff).

I will say that although it's kind of fascinating from an academic perspective (there was actually an article published in American Scientist on "how many different ways can spammers spell 'viamagra'" and tracing how it changed and mutated over the months - still, it's an annoyance to have to actually deal with. I have to hit my in-box and my "quarantine" box almost daily just to clear out all the crap I get sent. And that's both my personal e-mail and my work e-mail.

(Some of the really horrifyingly depraved spam - at least in what they are offering - actually come to my work address. And no, I don't surf any dodgy sites...I think .edu addresses are just prone to getting bad spam, because they can't differentiate faculty from students. And a few years ago we had a security breach from a disgruntled former employee and it's entirely possible he sold or gave all our addresses to spamming outlets.)

But at any rate - the PSAs make me chuckle, and I hope they do educate a few people who might otherwise be naive and fall for the scams. Because if no one got scammed, then the scammers might go away. Or at least I hope.

comment and counter-comment

Heard on the news: "Relief agencies are amazed at the outpouring of donations and help in response to the wildfires."

My immediate response: "Well, duh! That's how Americans ARE."

Seriously - there are a lot of societal problems here, there are some problems with the country BUT when bad crap happens, people step up and help and do all kinds of unselfish loving acts.

And I thank God that my countrypeople are, by and large, like that.

Oh, and...

It seems that even Pinky is now a spammer.

I just received one labeled "Tnorf-ne"

Sounds like Pinky, at any rate.

the absolute limit

Okay, I think this is about the worst - in terms of the mental picture if you take it to mean what they intend it to mean - or the funniest - if you take it in an "innocent" literal reading - spam message ever:

"She will love a massive meat in through her back door."

Somehow, I'm envisioning clandestine deliveries of the giant-size Hickory Farms smoked hams to the kitchen door of a household where most of the folks have gone vegetarian.

I don't think that's what the spammers had in mind, though.

Petty

Given all that's going on in the world, this is going to be kind of a petty vent.

But, you've been warned.

First off: I cannot stand it when students call to let me know they need to miss an exam (and request a make up) when they KNOW I am in class. It is as if they are afraid of dealing with me in person and won't call me because they are afraid I will say no.

It's even worse when they leave no contact number, just "I'll try calling you again." I am not planning on sitting my office waiting for your call. It is Friday. I have fieldwork to do. Even if I didn't - it is Friday.

I also cannot stand the students who come to class when there is a quiz or short test - when we are doing something after the test - who come, take the test, and leave. I have made it a point of, as I hand out the test, telling the students what we will be doing after the test so that they have no excuse to say, "But I didn't KNOW we were having class after the test!"

And of course it goes without saying that I cannot stand it when people show up ONLY for the exams, and then wonder why they're failing.

You know, it occurs to me that perhaps some of the problems we have in this nation may be related to a breakdown in the belief or understanding of cause-and-effect. That people don't learn from their mistakes. I've had students repeat my class, where they failed the first time because they partied-hardy and didn't spend time studying. And then they take the class again, and do the SAME DAMN THING.

Look: if it didn't work the first time, why do you think it will work the second time? If I mix up a bunch of ingredients and stick them in a pan and cook it up and it tastes like crap when it's done, I'm not going to do that recipe again - or at least not do it the same way.

Oh, and another thing: DNA fingerprinting has NOTHING AT ALL to do with actual fingerprints.

I just needed to get that off my chest. It drives me up the wall every year - I teach about the process, I show them examples, I explain why it's used, and then on the exam I ask "What is it and where is it used" and at least 20% of the people say "DNA fingerprinting is getting DNA out of the fingerprints left at a crime scene" Durr! Even though I make a BIG POINT that it requires "bodily fluid" - blood, semen, saliva, or something like hair follicles or skin.

I guess these folks don't watch any of the various CSI clones?

And don't even get me started on stem cells. They ask us to 'teach to the controversy.' I'm sorry, but how does one do that when the majority of students don't even know what a stem cell is?

I don't know. I was fairly insulated as a college student but even I watched the news on tv or listened to it on the radio, and read a newspaper, at least on Sundays. (And actually? A good big-city Sunday paper is a lovely way to spend a long quiet Sunday afternoon.)

So I don't know. I don't know where to start with some of the students. I don't want to cover trivial stuff - like one of my colleagues said, "The textbook - as its example on enzymes - says that they're used to make stonewashed jeans. How does that matter?" But I don't know any more. Some of the students, it seems their level of background understanding IS trivial.

What really gets me? We're gearing up for a "major overhaul" of the course - because the students don't do well on assessment tests. This involves a lot of work and a lot of changes. And I have a sinking feeling we'll be doing this again in another 3 years. Sometimes it is not US, sometimes it is THEM. I try to make the topics interesting - I look up all the 'applications,' I try to get discussions going on the different issues. I try to find interesting stories that illustrate the points.

But - you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. There is only so much I can do. Don't get me wrong - some of the students ARE doing well and they seem pretty interested based on the questions they ask and the points they bring up. And I get decent evaluations. But it's that 10% or so of people who sit there dead-eyed that drive me up the wall.

Glad

I'm glad I'm busy and don't have time to watch the self-styled pundits discussing the fires on the news or on chat-shows. Tracey is talking about it a little bit and it's making me angry, attitudes of people like Katie Couric and George Carlin.

Look - yes, you have opinions. But it's not the time, not the place to spew them. And incidentally - it's bad form to ask a firefighter why he isn't doing "more." I KNOW a few firefighters. You won't find a more doing-all-they-can-when-there-is-a-need profession (unless, perhaps, you look at the Marines). They are not magic. They are NOT Dumbledore, people, they can't wave a magic wand (heh...given Rowling's recent comment, that has two meanings) and make the fires go away.

Once again I am amazed at the inability of some people to understand a very simple fact of life, which is:

Stuff happens.

Sometimes that stuff is bad and there's sometimes nothing to be done about it. It is no one's fault. It is how the world works. What we are called to do (at least, this is what I believe) is to get in there and work, do what we can, to try to ameliorate the effects of that bad stuff. And that DOES NOT include flappin' your gums about people "overbuilding" and crap. We can have that discussion later. Not while people are sleeping in tents and worrying about their dogs.

I have to say it kind of kills me that I'm not closer, that there's not something more concrete I can do other than praying and sending a check to Salvation Army.

That said...my two California cousins are OK, and I am thankful for that. (Actually, my cousin D. - he lives in Bakersfield, and I had forgotten that he had moved there recently, so he's out of any fire area. But still). And it seems like my IIFs are all OK, and I'm grateful for that.

And it sounds like they think the winds may die back tomorrow, and give the firefighters a chance to kick fire butt. I hope that they will.

uhhhh....

Some of you know I teach a Youth Group every Wednesday night at my church. They are mostly 12-18 year olds, mostly boys.

Well, I began working my way through the Sermon on the Mount with them a month or so ago - I had read someone who said, "Protestants don't pay enough attention to the Sermon on the Mount!" and so I thought that was a good enough reason to use it as my teaching focus for this quarter.

I've been going through Jesus' discussion of each of the commandments each week. This week, I'm up to Matt. 5: 27-31.

Um, yeah. The adultery ones.

I looked at them, and I thought...should I just "blip" over these, go on to the next one (on not saying stuff you don't mean). I mean - the local public schools DO offer abstinence-based sex ed.

And then I thought, no. Yes, it's kind of uncomfortable for me to talk about sex, especially in front of a group of teenaged boys, and I admit I'll probably be euphemism-pa-looza tomorrow night (I've already used in my write up words like "don't run around," and "faithful" and stuff like that).

I'm kind of downplaying Jesus' words on divorce because many - if not most - of the kids are from what used to be called "broken homes." In one case the divorce came because of abuse going on in the household. And I don't want to make them feel worse than they already do (I know they do) about the whole family situation.

But - I'm taking the "no adultery" part of the lesson as a (basically) three-pronged approach:

first - when you marry, you are faithful to your spouse. That means both emotionally faithful as well as the more traditional 'sleeping with' faithful. I've seen couples get into problems because one member of the couple had a "work husband" or "work wife" where they developed a strong emotional attachment to this person at work, and they'd confide in them, and kind of neglect their real spouse emotionally. And although that's perhaps not as shattering as a true affair, it still really sucks to be the spouse of someone who has such a GREAT friend at work that they share EVERYTHING with and they're less willing to share with you.

second- when you're dating, if you think the person you're dating might be "the one," don't run around on them - and (perhaps paradoxically) don't rush into things. (for "things" read sex. I said I was going to be euphemism-pa-looza.). Part of dating is sort of learning what makes the person tick, so you can determine if you can spend an entire lifetime with them, or if they have traits that turn out to be "dealbreakers." I've seen far, far, far too many hasty marriages that wound up either unhappy or divorced because the people involved were drawn in by lust and didn't think about personality or attitudes.

And then, finally - treating people of the opposite sex with respect. Basically - don't objectify people. See them as children of God. And it's hard to do that when you're spending all your time talking about the "tight buns" or "ginormous rack" of the person.

So, hopefully it will work okay. Hopefully the kids will neither fall into derisive laughter at my spinster euphemisms, nor will they be so embarrassed about the idea ("Sex! Mentioned in CHURCH!") that they totally clam up.

*****

Oh, and welcome to Soapbox Diva! And maybe I wasn't clear - I'm not saying that all "childish things" need to be put away when one is an adult - in fact, I have a pretty healthy teddy bear collection myself, and 80% of the dvds I own are cartoon-oriented (several of the Miyazake movies, and the box set of Animaniacs). I think adulthood is more knowing what is appropriate, when.

Another C.S. Lewis quotation: "When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

I think perhaps the desire to look sophisticated - and that desire being so strong that someone can't plop down on the sofa and enjoy, say, "Pinky and the Brain" or a good old Bugs Bunny cartoon - is actually part of the permanent-adolescence problem.

I think nightfly has a good point - the undergrown adults are aping adult behavior because they think it makes them grown-up, when what they are totally missing are the attitudes of respect, responsibility, and appropriateness that are what really make a grown-up.

I remember once commenting to a friend, "Why is it that things that are labeled "adult comedies" are so often extremely juvenile in their attitudes?"

Don't get me wrong - sex and such can be funny in some situations - but so often a lot of the "special unrated editions" of dvds seem so aimed at pushing the envelope of bad taste that I don't see anything "adult" about the comedy.

so many prayers...

My prayers (for safety and also for freedom-from-fear) are going out to the people in Southern California who are affected by the fires. I don't just have IIFs (Invisible Internet Friends) out there, I have flesh-and-blood friends and also flesh-and-blood relatives (a cousin - as far as I know he's okay; I haven't heard anything. We don't talk on a regular basis so I'm not worried that I've not heard anything).

I do not live in a fire-prone region (our main natural-disaster threat is tornadoes, which is different from a fire storm in a lot of ways), so I don't know what it's like but it looks very frightening.

And as Emily said on her blog - stay safe, and when they tell you to leave, you pay attention to that, okay? Don't make this another New Orleans.

At any rate - stay safe. Hopefully some of the giant tanker planes the Feds are sending today will help make a dent in the fires.

And more personal prayers, prayers of another sort:

Joel has a beautiful post up about prayers for Lauren (the tiny child with neuroblastoma; the one upon whose behalf a great many FOs have been issued against cancer on the FFOT. And you know...when I think about it, in a kind of twisted way those FOs themselves are a form of prayer...a recognition that something is Not Right and a hope that somehow things can change). He compares the situation to the OT lectionary reading from this past Sunday, how Aaron and Hur held up Moses' hands against the Amelekites (I have to admit this is a passage I am less familiar with than many). And Joel observes that praying for others is like that - that you are helping them to hold up their hands, that you are providing some amount of strength and assistance to them in a difficult time.

It's a nice metaphor and one I will remember. I earlier talked about how I sometimes envisioned prayer as sort of an invisible spiritual net that the pray-ers try to set up under the person being prayed for. And I like that image too, because it reminds me to pray for the FAMILIES of the afflicted person as well. As someone who has had seriously ill relatives, I'm well aware that the family members are almost as much in need of that "net" to hold them up as the ill person is.

One of the things that strikes me - and humbles me again and again - about people of faith is how WILLING - no, how EAGER they are to offer up prayers for assistance or healing for people they have never even met. I think it's perhaps because so many of them see us as being all connected...it's kind of like the bit in one of the early Star Wars movies where (I think it was) Ben Kenobi made the comment that he "felt a great disturbance in the Force" when the evil Empire snuffed out a bunch of innocent lives.

(And I have to say I liked the Old-School Star Wars way of dealing with the Force - leaving it somewhat mysterious, so that you could almost accept that it was their way of describing the Holy Spirit - rather than the New-School "midchlorian" explanation, which seemed clunky and mechanistic and not-full-of-wonder to me. When I was a kid, I loved the idea of the Force.)

At any rate - that kind of plugged-in, everyone-is-my-brother-deep-down feeling - it's a good thing.

One of the memorable scenes from My Antonia - which is one of my favorite novels - is when the Mr. Shimerdas (the father of the recent-immigrant, Bohemian family) starts to pray over something (I don't remember what) in front of Jim Burden and his grandfather. Now, the Shimerdas are foreign (and, presumably, Catholic - and Jim and his grandparents are old frontier Protestant), and there's a moment where you think there might be some rejection there (remembering how badly some Protestants in my country have treated Catholics over the years - and that's one thing I think we as Protestants should be ashamed of), but it doesn't happen - Mr. Shimerdas' prayer is accepted by those being prayed for. And later, Jim's grandfather makes the comment that, "The prayers of all good people are good."

And you know? I believe that.

death of childhood, death of adulthood?

This is something I've been wondering about.

For years, I've been hearing people (especially mothers of young girls, it seems) talking about the "death of childhood" - where kids are pushed to be "sophisticated" or "grown up" (really - acting old beyond their years). The sort of trampy clothes sold for pre-teens, the fact that lots of girls seem to give up playing with dolls and such at increasingly early ages, the pressure to start dating so young. (I know of ten year olds who "date." While I realize that's not like, say, 18 year olds "dating," still, it sets up certain expectations that are probably kind of heavy for such a young kid.)

Of course this has come to a head with the talk about birth control pills being offered to girls potentially as young as 11. (Which just blows my mind...digression time...

When I was 11, I was still sewing doll clothes and still playing with my Kermit the Frog doll. I knew the facts of life but was in NO rush to put them to the test. In fact, if you'd asked me at 11 about having sex, I probably would have grudgingly said, "Well, when I'm like 28 and married and if I want to have a baby, I suppose I will HAVE to." I still thought the whole idea was incredibly gross.

Now, granted - for me puberty didn't kick in until 13 or 14, but even then, even at 15 and 16 and 17, I still figured I was not ready. Especially not ready if it meant I might have a kid as a result.

But anyway. I realize it was 25 years ago now, but still...even then...I think I was in a lot of ways a sheltered and kind of backwards kid. I was still interested in teddy bears and dolls when my friends were experimenting with makeup and hairstyles. I refer to having had my first "boyfriend" at 10, but really - he was the first boy I didn't think was icky and that I wanted to talk to. It was incredibly innocent - we sat across from each other in homeroom and we used to talk and laugh. We never even held hands or anything like that.

And you know? Thank God I had those experiences. Thank God I had those innocent times to sort of try things out on, instead of being plunged hardcore into the world of "real" boyfriends and dating and worrying about my appearance and stuff.

And I'm glad I played with toys for as long as I did. I have good memories to look back on - years spent sprawled on the floor building stuff out of Lego bricks. [and, okay, maybe when I was perhaps a bit past the age when it was considered acceptable, I still did play with them - but I had the argument that "but I'm just spending time with my little brother." I was, but I was also playing with the bricks...]. Years spent building forts out of blankets and dining room chairs. Years making my own paper dolls. (I made a lot of paper dolls. When I got older, I'd check books on historical or ethnic costume out of the library and do it under the guise of research or "preparing for a possible career as a fashion designer" but the truth was, I just liked drawing paper dolls and making clothes for them).

At any rate - I had a fairly protracted and carefree childhood. And now I'm an adult, and although I don't always LOVE shouldering all the responsibilities and requirements of being an adult, I do - because I'm an adult and I feel it is expected of me.

And I wonder sometimes if the strength of my childhood has something to do with that - that I was a child for long enough that I was able to build up into being an adult.

(Follow me here).

Another thing that I hear people bemoaning these days is how so many young adults seem to be stuck in a protracted adolescence - they can't buckle down and WORK, they think the world owes them a living, they don't commit to things, they don't take on the 'trappings' of adulthood. (Though that last one, I don't know about - I wear a watch with Eeyore on it and I'm still a responsible adult. And I have Snoopy pillowcases on my bed pillows at this very moment. And there's nothing wrong with that. But....when you have a job interview, you know? You wear "business casual" or better. I've seen people go into interviews in wife-beater shirts and old torn jeans and wonder why they didn't get the job. Perhaps it's not so much always having the 'trappings' of adulthood as much as it is knowing what is appropriate, when.)

And I wonder if the two things - the death of childhood, and the failure of many 20- (and even in some cases, 30-) somethings to fully graduate to responsible adulthood are linked.

One of the things I guess I absorbed during my protracted childhood were ideas of appropriateness. How to behave. How not to behave. What was important, and what was silly. (Didn't C.S. Lewis, in one of his Narnia books, talk about how Susan had fallen away from the belief in Narnia, and instead taken on a "silly" belief in things like lipsticks and skirts? Or something to that effect?).

In drawing my paper dolls, and looking at the books of dresses for inspiration, I think I learned a little bit about why short skirts were sometimes not OK. And why sometimes it was better to be more covered than less. I think I also kind of absorbed the difference between how children and adults dressed.

I think also the hundreds of little comedies-of-manners I put my stuffed toy animals (or the little plastic zoo animals - I had dozens of those and they were almost like a miniature acting troop, the way I played with them) were my mimicking what I saw the grown-ups doing and saying, my trying to make sense out of things. Trying to learn why some behavior was accepted and other behavior was seen as foolish. (And I was lucky in that I had good models - "acceptable" behavior was not the kind of narrow-minded, "but they're not OUR kind of people" attitude some of my friends' parents had; and foolish behavior was, well, behavior that could bring pain or shame to you.)

I do think childhood is important - as a learning process, as a process of watching the adults and trying to learn how to be one. (And I suppose, sadly, some kids don't have much to work with in the way of models, and that may be part of the problem.)

But I wonder - if kids don't have that kind of "lag time" - where they can sit and think about what they hear the grown ups say, and how they watch the grown-ups act, and try to synthesize it into some kind of reasonable whole, if maybe they have problems being grown up themselves.

What I'm trying to say is, a kid who takes on some of the behaviors of adulthood too early may fail to develop other (possibly more important) behaviors.

Or maybe more baldly: if a kid gets cheated out of childhood, maybe they have a harder time successfully growing up into an adult? The little girls running around in tight sparkly t-shirts with double-entendre messages on them, or (God forbid) sweatpants with "Juicy" on the backside, who ape the suggestive moves of dancers on MTV - they maybe have less of a chance of understanding fully what it means to be female, and maybe become stuck in a caricature? Or the boys who base their behavior on the coarse, rude, but somehow "cool" guy on television - they don't learn what it really is to be a man?

I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud here. But sometimes I wonder if there's a link between kids growing up too fast, and their not growing up completely. And I worry about the future of a nation of 45-year-old adolescents.