Keeping it real

"I tell [the kids] all the time, 'Mommy and Daddy are rich. Y'all are broke.'"
~Will Smith, on keeping his kids real

[Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith

 and their under-privileged children]

My mom said crazy shit like this, but she wasn't kidding.  Whenever I would exhibit an inkling of self-pity, my mother would mock me by singing, "Nobody knows de trouble I've seen...", which is an old Negro spiritual (my mother is black); or she would say, "Jules, you're a Slav.  Your great-grandfather worked a plow and died alone in a ditch.  What do you have to be crying about?  Go clean the bathroom."

She was always trying to get us to clean shit. As far as I could tell, my mom's whole purpose in life was to cook and clean, but she hated doing both of these things and as far as she was concerned, if she did the cooking, we were supposed to be cleaning all the time.

ME: I'm bored.
MOM: Go clean the toilet.

ME: Can I go to the movies with Michele?
MOM: No. Fold the towels.

If I would ever complain about anything, she would say, "You get to live in my house."  And I believed her.  I thought I was privileged that my parents let me sleep inside.  I'd seen the barns in Croatia where my grandparents were born.  I thought they could send me back there.

I recently posted an entry where I boasted that I had FIVE BARBIE DOLLS!  When I wrote that post, I was 17 years old, and I thought having five Barbies was excessive.  But as I re-typed that essay recently, I was humbled.  How sad.  Five Barbie Dolls today is probably the number of Barbie Dolls in a Barbie Doll Starter Kit that comes with the Barbie Dream Penthouse and BMW.  Little girls today probably have five Barbie Dolls just to use as maids and manicurists for their REAL Barbie Doll contingent.  They probably use their spare Barbie Dolls to prop up the legs of their four-poster canopy beds to make more room underneath for all of their Barbie accessories.  Looking back, the fact that I had only five Barbies (one of which was an imposter anyway), is total bullshit.

But I thought it was amazing that I had five Barbie Dolls because I didn't have many toys.  Think of any toy.  I probably asked for that toy, and my mother would say, "If you're so bored, go clean the litter box."  If I asked my dad, he would convince us that we could make the toy out of a box, so we were always playing with boxes.  Boxes weren't in short supply at our house.  We moved every year, and my dad always kept all the moving boxes.  Also, my mother kept all the little boxes: jewelry boxes, shoe boxes, cereal boxes, oh, we all different sorts of boxes!

Any toy that was roughly the shape of a box, could be made out of a box.

I wanted a Speak and Spell.  So my dad made me one.  Out of a box.

[Whining] "But it doesn't do anything."

"Use your imagination!"

I wanted a Barbie Dream House.  So my dad made me one.  Out of a box.

[Exasperated] "But Dad, the Barbie Dream House has three floors."

"It does?  OK, well, here!"  He puts two more boxes on top of the first box.

[Unsatisfied] "But Dad, there's no elevator."

He takes my Barbie out of the bottom box and puts her in the top box.  "See how that works!"

[Pissed off] "It's supposed to be pink."

"Color it."

Well, you and I both know that a brown cardboard box colored pink is still brown, so I complained about this too.

"Use your imagination!"

When he said this, he meant, "Whatever we can't do with a box, do it in your head."

My dad was always making us use our imagination to imagine we had better toys.  But we sort of believed in him because my dad was a fun guy.  My dad was "fun" if you think it's fun to be forced to play Risk on the day you learn to speak.  My dad was "fun" if you think it's fun to go on a 90-mile bike ride when you're eight.  My dad was "fun" if you think it's OK to let your kids stand in the car with their heads sticking out the sunroof of a Ford Fiesta while he drives 80 mph down 75th Street on the way to the pool.  My dad was "fun" if you think it's cool that on the day you get your driver's permit, he takes you to the high school parking lot to do donuts and makes you drive 40 mph towards a fence and then tells you to crank the wheel really hard to avoid the crash, "So you learn that you're in control of the car."  My dad was a fun guy, if you think it's fun for your dad to tell you to stand on your tippy-toes at the measuring pole so you can ride the Super Duper Looper at Hershey Park when you're five and about to poop in your pants because you don't really want to go on an upside-down roller coaster.  "It's going to be FUN, Jules!" [i.e. I want to have adult fun, but I'm stuck here with a five-year-old, and I don't care if she's pooping her little pink pants -- we're getting on that roller coaster].

He made us have fun, whether we wanted to or not. We'd go to Great America the day before the first day of school every year, and we'd have so much "fun", we'd have sunburns and blisters and be lame by the time we got home at midnight.  We had to RUN to every ride.  We weren't allowed to eat.  We had to drink water out of the flume ride.  We had to RIDE THE RIDES ALL DAY.  Just before the amusement park closed, when we were completely done having fun and wanting to pass out in the car, he'd make us run to get in line for Shock Wave, so we'd be standing in line for an hour to get one last ride long after the park was closed and all the other kids were eating cotton candy and walking to the parking lot.  My dad was not risk-averse, not particularly concerned for our safety, and doing all of these things behind our mother's back -- a lot of the "fun" we had with my dad, we weren't allowed to tell our mother about.

I'm making it sound like I was some forlorn child sitting in a box wearing a babushka.  And come to think of it, that's kind of true.  I didn't have many toys, and the other half of the equation was, my mom wouldn't buy me normal clothes.  I went to private school and wore a uniform, but when I got home, I had this dismal array of clothes that my mom got from Venture, which is a store that no longer exists, but was SO much more pathetic than K-Mart in the 80s.  It was similar to a shoe store in East Berlin.  There would be one kind of shirt, and so whatever shirt they had in stock, my mom would buy me 3 of them.  When I was 12, it seemed like a lot of the clothes had teddy bears and rainbows, and all of my pants were brown or gray because my brother had to be able to wear them when he grew into them.  If I begged for a pair of jeans, which I never was allowed to have, after she was done singing me some insulting Negro spiritual and making me clean the gutters, she'd say, "You get to go to private school," like the choice was to go to school OR have pants.

I don't know why we couldn't have toys or clothes.  We weren't poor.  We weren't even middle class.  I'd venture to say that my parents had a great deal of money.  But they didn't spend it.  I love listening to my dad talking about his retirement accounts now, and I'm like, yeah, meanwhile, on dress-up-day, I had to go to school wearing a table cloth held around my waist with your old belt.  I actually did that once.  I wore this red and white checkered table cloth and put a belt around it.  I cried myself to sleep the night before, but I thought I could get away with it because, although it was dress up day, we also had to spend the whole day taking apptitude tests, so maybe no one would notice me.  But we had to have lunch and recess.  We were playing Capture the Flag and I was the fastest girl in my class, so I was in my glory, running around in my belted red-and-white checkered table cloth saving people.  I grabbed Dave's hand and brought him back.  When we got to our side, he said, "You're really fast, Bob Evans!"  I will never forget that, or forgive my mother, for letting me go to school dressed IN A TABLE CLOTH and then come home to play with boxes.

If I were to ask her about it now, my mother would say, "You were building character."  And then she would make me do some dusting.

Well, you were before your time, Ma.  Thanks for keepin' in real.  I have character to spare, just like Will Smith's kids.

Alanis Morissette seems like she needs cheering up

Did you see Ryan Reynolds at the Oscars?

[Damn.]

I feel about Ryan Reynolds the way I feel about Brian Urlacher. I have been trying for about six years to "run into" Brian Urlacher. I ask around. I try to find out where he hangs out. People think I'm joking, and I am. But also I am not. I think that if Brian Urlacher met me, he would really take a shine to me. He has three children with three different women, so I figure, why not a fourth? I wouldn't make him marry me, but I would change my last name to Urlacher. I'd do it for the baby. Also, I'd do it because I have this very real-seeming fantasy about walking into a court room and saying, "Good morning, Your Honor. Jules Urlacher representing the petitioner. Yeah, man. THAT Urlacher."

I'm pretty certain that I cannot achieve the kind of celebrity I'm looking for on my own merits. But being Brian Urlacher's Fourth Baby Mama is an obvious best end-run around doing anything of note without exerting much effort (my friends keep insisting that epidurals make it seem like you're not even having a baby). Anyway, I believe that, like Brian Urlacher (and, while I'm at it, Vince Vaughn, especially if he's really coked up and not totally certain what city he's in), Ryan Reynolds, if he had the opportunity to spend a little time with me, would really like me, and so, in my head, we're kind of dating, and may I say, I really liked the way he looked in the tux I picked out for him for the Oscars.

It is easy to picture myself dating Ryan Reynolds, because he never goes anywhere with his wife. His wife, as you may know, is Scarlett Johansson. I'm not going to bad mouth Scarlett Johansson. I realize that doing so would be futile. Undercutting Scarlett Johansson, with her puffy lips and her booby boobs and her husky voice and her blond extensions and her curvy rump, will only make me seem petty. So what can I say except, Scarlett Johansson is just fine. But something I know for certain is, Scarlett Johansson isn't the one for Ryan Reynolds. For one thing, she's like 48 years younger than him, and for another, Ryan Reynolds dated and was previously engaged to fellow Canadian Alanis Morissette for four years, yet he was married to Scarlett Johansson within a year of breaking up with Alanis. It doesn't smell right. And besides, it's Hollywood and they're both actors and no relationship can survive in that town, so they are doomed. Doomed. I'm so sorry, Scarlett Johansson. I wonder who will be your second husband. Or your third. You're so very young. You have lots of time to fit in a baker's dozen of failed marriages before your ass falls into ruin. But I harbor no ill-will towards you. It's not your fault that Ryan Reynolds doesn't want to be seen with you. It's just, you would take away from the sun glinting off of his hairless abs.

Why though, should I care?

I know that, whereas I might run into Brian Urlacher one day, I am never going to meet Ryan Reynolds. That's OK. I'm never going to do a lot of things. Like, I'm never going to play the harpsicord for the queen or fly in a space shuttle. And I'll never get a chance to make Ryan Reynolds like me. But just imagine if you had dated Ryan Reynolds for four years. Imagine if, when you started dating, you were already famous for singing songs that go into elaborate detail about your sex life and your heartbreaks and your past lovers (you can see why I like Alanis so much) and no one had ever heard of your new boyfriend (except people in Canada, but, I mean real people). Imagine then that Hollywood got a hold of him, and he wasn't just wonderfully hilarious in movies like "Waiting" and "Just Friends" (in which you had a very funny cameo that got cut), but then he buffed up into an action hero (Ryan Reynolds and Parker Posey are wildly wildly funny in "Blade: Trinity"), and became as consistently shirtless and bankable as Matthew McConoughey in romantic comedy after romantic comedy.

And then imagine if after he became very famous and very chiseled and you were very happy together, he dumped you and married a young girl less than 12 months later. Well. Of course you had to write a song about that. Take it out on us. We understand. Oh, and then your butt tripled in size and People and US Weekly wrote articles about it and you had to go around telling everyone, "I love my new curves!" And no one believed you. So then you started appearing in Weeds and all of a sudden seemed sightly again, but no one gave you credit for it, because that iced-coffee hose, Mary-Louise Parker, is so impossibly skinny.

After plowing through the meat and Twinkie department somewhere in Vancouver I presume, Alanis wrote a song about Ryan Reynolds called Torch, which is not even nearly my favorite song of hers, but, as with most of Alanis' songs about relationships, it is gut-wrenchingly honest and it makes me feel actual pain when I listen to it. It also makes me feel as if I too dated, and got dumped by, Ryan Reynolds, so I feel like we're in the same boat, Alanis and me. I miss Ryan Reynolds' smell too. I can still smell him. He smells like a combination of Brian Urlacher's baldy-bald head and Vince Vaughn's dirty flannel cocaine-encrusted shirt. God, I love that old familiar scent.

Alanis, I'm so sorry that this happened to you. I don't understand why Ryan Reynolds didn't want you. I want you. Maybe not as much as I want Brian Urlacher or Ryan Reynolds or Vince Vaughn, but just the same, I am so sorry that you are sad. And that when you are sad you grow saddlebags.  I am sorry that even though you are a comedic genius, people don't really know about it.  So, as a gesture of my tremendous respect for you, let me tell you some things that I hope will cheer you up:

You have a nice head of hair. I don't have much hair to speak of, and I may in fact be balding. I can't tell. I'm trying to ignore it. But when it's time for me to buy a wig, I will buy a wig made from your imported Canadian hair, I promise.

You have an interesting way of pronouncing words. The only artists worse at pronunciation are Tori Amos and the lead squealer of Sigur Ros, but at least you know that there are two other people out there who can't talk as good as you.

You apparently visited India once and became moved by it. Maybe go back there. My Fazio's children's encyclopedia tells me that 95% of the world's population lives in India, so the odds are good that there is some fine chap there waiting for you. I bet you could get a gazillion dates on match.com/India. Like in the USA, most of the dates you go on through match.com will be with dullards and perverts and seemingly charming fellows who are massive disappointments in person, and men who say they are 6'1", but are actually 5'4", but it only takes one! That's what my mom always says. This is the same woman who married the man with whom she went on her first date, but she knows what she's talking about. She's always telling me so. Doesn't your mom give you good advice like this?

Well, does she??? If so, then chalk that up as something in the sunny column. Even if you never fall in love again, your mother will still love you, and you can always move into her basement. My mom is always reminding me of this, too. It's so comforting.

According to your own account, you give angry head in movie theaters. I think this kind of thing is widely appreciated by men, and you will go far if you keep reminding people about it. Be proud of yourself! Some ladies don't like to do blowjobs anywhere, least of all in public, and while instilling raw fear in movie-going penises.

You have a twin. I think that's neat! His name is Chad. Maybe don't mention that part.

Even though you are a woman of incredible talent and fame and you have plenty of money and you are quite beautiful, you are the same age as me, and you are a never-married, childless spinster, like me, so if all else fails, come to Chicago and be my friend. I can teach you what the word "ironic" means, and we can go out looking for Brian Urlacher together. I will even be your wingman and will happily yield him up to you. I like you that much, Alanis. But I call dibs on Vince Vaughn.

where r u?

What did we do before texting?  We talked to each other on the phone, that's what.  I was a year out of law school before I got a cell phone, and I was one of the first people I knew to have one.  It was as big as the Sun, and the battery lasted four minutes, and it cost $482 to make a phone call, but that's the way it was.

Before texting and cell phones, you could never find your friends in bars.  You had to walk around the PedMall, traipse all over the bar, not see your friends, and then try the next place.  Even well-laid plans to meet up were often foiled.  Before texting and cell phones, once you got in your car, you were incommunicado.  No one knew whether you were on your way or if you were trying to find a parking space or if you were still at home in the shower.  And before texting and cell phones, dating was normal.  Now that we have texting, dating is SO fucked up, I can't even talk about it.

While I didn't come late to cell phones, I did come late to texting.  I thought it was something that only teenagers did, so I felt sheepish about doing it.  Creepy even.  Plus, until a year ago, I had a cell phone with a regular number pad, and texting on that thing was a pain.  First of all, it took too long to tap out the letters.  Second, I cannot write in text speak.  It makes my eyes bleed.  I physcially cannot use the characters "u" or "r" or "2" to mean "you" or "are" or "to".  I just can't do it.  I even have to use sentence case and proper punctuation.  So, while you can say, "where r u", I have to write, "Where are you?"  And while you can say, "gr8 2 c u :) 2mrw?", I have to write, "I really enjoyed seeing you, Jim. I hope we'll get together again soon!  Maybe tomorrow?"  Even with a full qwerty keyboard on my Android phone, it takes me a long time to draft, edit, proof, and finally send my texts, so I'm just no good at texting.

Being bad at texting can mess up opportunities. It's not helpful when someone booty texts you and you're trying to think of a good response and while you're in the middle of tapping out something really witty and fun, he texts, "why u taking so long?'

[me being bad at texting

also, as per usual, sweaty]

I make unjustified judgments about people based on their grammar and spelling.  When someone misspells a word, or says "you and I" because they think it makes them sound more intelligent, even though it should be "you and me" because it's the object of a preposition, I get upset. I feel disappointed. I can't help it. I know that's my cross to bear, and no one else is with me, so I'm the one who has to change.  But it isn't coming easily for me.  The purposeful shortening of words and not following the rules of grammar, even in the interest of ease and speed, disheartens me and turns everything upside down.  You're writing in ebonics, but you've got an advanced degree.  It doesn't compute.

The first person to write like this was Prince. Check out the lyrics to Pop Life. Then Sinead O'Connor started doing it. But now it's gone to an extreme.  Text speak is widely accepted, and people write this way in emails now too.  They even say things like "LOL" and "WTF".  There are more syllables in "WTF" than there are in "what the fuck"  It isn't saving you any time, so why are you saying it that way?  Are you afraid to swear?  Are you more embarrassed about swearing than you are about how you can't read and write?  And really, are you LOL?  Because I'm standing right in front of you, and you clearly are not LOL.  Don't lie to me right in my face.

Another problem I've noticed about texting is that, whereas in some instances it saves time and gives helpful information in real time, texting is, most of the time, a waste of time.  It can take hours of texting back and forth to commicate what could have been said in a 30-second telephone conversation.  This is because, after you send a text, you have no control over how long it takes the recipient of the text to reply to you with another text.  And it's stupid, because you are both obviously holding your phones in your hands. It would be so much faster to dial the person's number, say what you need to say, and then hang up.

But people don't like to say things out loud.  People prefer to text, because texting is passive, and what I mean by that is: Texting is for pussies.  When you send someone a text, it's the equivalent of saying to them, "I'm afraid to call you, but if I were to call you, I'd hope to get your voice mail so I could leave a message and not actually have to talk to you.  I'd prefer to make it so you have to call me back, and when you call me back, I probably won't pick up the phone, because I said what I wanted to say in the message I left on your voice mail."

So while I do text, even though I have to do it as if I am writing an old-timey letter, I also have friends who don't text at all, and it's annoying.  It's like having a friend who doesn't have a telephone, and when I want to talk to that friend, I have to ride my horse and cart over to his house and ring the bell.  But whereas you may find yourself heckling your friends who don't text, how annoying is it when your parents get in on the action?   No one wants a text from her mother.  Not hardly ever.

Another thing about texting is, there are no rules.  There's no etiquette at all.  First, there is no universal agreement about what ends a discreet text interaction. In the olden days, and I believe this is widely in practice even today, when a telephone conversation had reached its conclusion, one person would say, "Bye." And then the other person would say, "Bye." And then you would both hang up.  You gave the cues.  Fin.  But with texting, sometimes you write, "Bye," but a lot of times you don't. You never really know when a text exchange is over. This is confusing and sometimes upsetting. If we're in the middle of a furious texting session, going quickly back and forth, and I ask you a question expecting you to respond right back, but instead I don't hear from you until four days later, well, what in the hell is that? That's the wonderful world of texting! And it's totally acceptable. It's so acceptable that when that happens, you're not even allowed to complain. Because no one owes you anything when you send a text. When you text someone, you're at their mercy. Maybe they'll find your text worthy of a response. Maybe they won't. If I call you and I say, "I'd really like to see you," it would be highly weird if you hung up on me. But if I text you, "I'd really like to see you," I might not ever hear from you again.

Second, there are no hours of operation. Remember when we just had telephones with rotary dials? There was no call waiting, and answering machines hadn't been invented. I actually lived in a world like this. In those days, the rule was, you don't call people at their home before 10 a.m. or after 9 p.m. If the phone ever rang after 11 p.m., your heart would start to race. The only thing on the other end of that phone call was, "Grandma is dead." But with texting, you can text anyone any old time. Except there's one rule, and it only applies to single people. If you are single, the only people who text you after midnight are people who want to have sex with you. For example, I get the following text at 2 a.m.: "Hey". That translates roughly to "Wanna come over and fuck?" But I can't tell my mother about this rule. So my mom might text me at midnight and say: "Hi, honey. I'm going to Sam's Club tomorrow. Let me know if you need anything :)" When I hear that little ding that tells me I have a text, my body starts to quiver... "Yippee!! I'm gonna do some fucking tonight! I wonder with who?!" But no. It's my mother, asking if I need a 48-pack of batteries and some toilet paper.

In conclusion, there are lots of things I don't like about texting and what it's done to our relationships and our world.  However, there is one thing I really love about texting, and that is the moment after you hear that "ding" that tells you you have a text.  It is the most exciting sound in the world and it gives you the most delicious feeling.  Anything could be at the other end of that little noise.  The butterflies in your stomach get all stirred up.  You could be in the middle of solving world peace and not able to get right to your phone, but you would be thinking, "YAY! I have a text!  I wonder who it could be!"  Opening a text is like opening a present, and the only thing more exciting than that is...

a love letter.

... booting up the scanner right now.