One Banana, Two Banana...

My first bicycle was a bright green two-wheeler with a white banana seat. And a really tall neon-orange flag attached to the back. The purpose of the flag was presumably so people manipulating four-wheeled forms of transport could see a bicycle on the other side of a brick wall. I can't vouch for whether this prevented great bodily injury (GBI, in legal-speak) in the suburbs of America, but I am guessing bike riders on either side of the Berlin Wall were safe from wayward Volkswagon Beetles. Ideally, neon green Bugs with peace signs (which Berliners hopefully did not confuse with the less-peaceful and more-corporate Mercedes logos) and daisy decals affixed.

As cool as my bicycle was, it caused me both significant physical and psychological pain. I believe this was the very mode of transport that I can blame for my (so far) only broken bone. Back in the day, my older brother and I rode all over the Cape Cod town where we summered, because, back in the day, there was no Jerry Springer Show to clue parents in to how depraved most of America is. My brother and I were careening full-speed down a hill, feet off the pedals, after a morning at the beach, my 9-year-old brother's 10-speeder careening significantly faster than a 7-year-old's banana-seated bike. I hit a bump and wiped out on the hill, ending up on the side of the road. I had no helmet (of course, it was the 1970s), but, thankfully, was equipped with an 8-foot-high plastic flagpole capable of impaling me. My brother continued along, not concerned that his sister was rolled up in a fetal position in the middle of the road. This brother went on to become a doctor, a helper of the frail and infirm, but that is another issue entirely. I forlornly got up and pushed my bicycle down the hill and through the town until I got home. Eventually my parents noticed that I winced every time I moved, and took me to the Cape Cod Hospital ER, where it was determined I had broken my clavicle. My chunky grade-school shoulders were jammed into a flexible brace and I was given a sling for good measure. The positive upshot of this was my best friend Michelle brought me my first ever stuffed animal, a Snoopy, to cheer me up. I didn't know what to do with a stuffed animal, so I later gave it a name, Stevie (after Stevie Nicks), made a paper sign to put around its neck, and put it high up in my bookcase.

In addition to suffering GBI, another downside to having a bicycle with a banana seat is I always seemed to be the butt of a certain joke that, to this day, I don't get. Boys would invariably ask "Do you have a bike? What color is it?" Or something of that ilk. When I would answer "green," they would break into peals of laughter. I am guessing that neither these boys nor their older brothers knew what was funny about this. And I can only imagine what became of these young comedians. 

ET: Skype Home

Not too long ago, my son asked me if we had electricity when I was young. Yes, I assured him, why was he asking? Well, he explained, I know you didn't have a cell phone or Wii, so I thought maybe you didn't have electricity.


Although I may not be a spring chicken, I am not such a miracle of nature that I waited almost 100 years until I began having children. But he had a point. It is hard to imagine what life was like before all the technology we have today. Sure, Atari and Pong were awesome in their day (and still rule!), but it is truly hard to imagine how my children would stay abreast of the latest baseball statistics or hone their hand-eye coordination without the advances of the last few decades.


We are decidedly backward in some basic ways--our largest television is 21 inches and I have to plug my Ipod into the casette deck of my car to play it while driving. However, generally I embrace gadgets, some years going through two or three Blackberries, and happy to remote control pretty much anything. And I will admit that a perfect day would be one holed up in a room with food and a TV and only communicate with the world through texting.


One of our favorite technological advances is Skype. Love Skype. The only drawback is the fact that there may be an expectation that one be groomed and presentable before clicking on the "video" icon. Our family has been known to Skype each other from different rooms in the house and, trust me, our home isn't that big. This practice caused confusion when my husband actually Skyped from China and my daughter thought daddy was calling from the next room and wasn't interested in talking. And it sure beats having to dial long series of numbers and attempt to communicate with hotel desk staff in foreign tongues. And my husband, who travels to Asia semi-frequently, has a name that is especially hard to communicate in Asian cultures.


But, I have moments when I long for the clunky electronics of my youth, especially the telephone. I distinctly remember the first time I discovered how cool it was to talk to someone on the phone. It was third grade and my friend Debbie and I exchanged phone numbers (only five digits in those days) and as soon as we got home from school, I went into our home office, closed the door, and called her. We talked for probably about an hour, recapping the day that we had experienced only minutes before. Actually, the entire time wasn't spent talking; I put the handset down on the desk for long periods of time: to go to the bathroom, get a snack, and to remind my family several times not to bother me because I was on the phone (everyone was busy doing their own things and no one cared).


This was in the day of the rotary phone, where you had to stick your finger in the hole of the number and drag it around until you were blocked by a little metal doodad. There was a lot of strength and precision required, because if you didn't rotate the dial all the way, the wrong number would register. And to do this five, eight or 11 times without error was quite a feat. You also had to actually have the phone number memorized, or neatly written down, since there was no re-dial or stored phone numbers at that time. I remember once trying to dial during a blackout and counting each hole to complete the phone number, as if I were reading Braille. 


As I became telephonically more sophisticated, I reveled in the possibilities of dialing "O" or 411 for information. The excitement of being able to talk to someone on demand was mind-boggling. My summer friend Michelle and I spent hours trying to call Donny Osmond by attemptng to outsmart the information operator. We would call 411 and sound like we were in a great hurry, explaining that Donny asked us to call him, but we had misplaced his phone number. He would be annoyed if the operator did not pass along his information. It never worked, of course. After discovering 411, when I went to visit my grandparents in another state, the first thing I did was run to the phone to see if 411 worked there too. It did. Cool. Really cool. 


In high school, my friend Sara and I took the Donny ruse a step farther. We were devotees of another bygone bit of telephonic machinery: the pay phone. We were (and still are) big baseball fans, and during Red Sox home games, we would sneak into the pay phone at school and call the hotel where the visiting team would stay. In our most official-sounding teenage voices, we would ask the hotel receptionist to put us through to players on the visiting team. Unbelievably, it worked almost every time. One time I said I was Reggie Jackson's agent and needed to be connected to him; the front desk clerk may have wondered why Jackson's agent sounded like she was 14, but didn't question it. Jackson probably would have been hip to us, except as soon as we got connected, we both dissolved into giggles and had to hang up.


Sadly, those days are long behind us. But on the balance, I have to say I prefer having the ability to immediately spring thoughts on an unsuspecting person with a text, or wait until I have time to thoughtfully respond to an email. I have a very old friend (from rotary phone days) who is sophisticated in all ways except communication technology. She communicates by calling--imagine that!--but is in a different timezone, with a different work schedule, and kids with different sleep habits. So we play phone-email tag: I email, she returns the email with a call, I return her call with an email. Between her voicemails and my emails, I suppose we piece together the details of each other's lives. Hopefully a new old-school/new-school gadget will come along soon so we can really catch up with each other.

Of Thee I Sing

My son goes to public school. When he started school, I expected to have the
usual flashbacks to elementary school days: the creaky desks, the annoying
hair-puller in the row behind me, and all that good stuff that comes flooding
back when you have kids. But one memory that I apparently repressed was that of
the institutionally mandated patriotism—in both chanted and musical form. Until
I stood at Friday assembly at my then-first-grade-son’s school, watching
hundreds of children, teachers and parents solemnly grasping their chests and
reciting the Pledge of Allegiance (and “under God,” at that!) and then, in
unrehearsed unison, adopting a beatific stance for the Star Spangled Banner. Was
I really on a children’s playground (in Los Angeles, weather is good and land is
expensive, so most events take place on the concrete hardtop) in a town where
Priuses outnumber traffic lights, and progressive attitudes are to the right
only of Park Slope, Brooklyn? Who ARE these people who I thought I knew? Had I
stumbled onto the set of extras of the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers?
Needless to say, it was many months before I could attempt another appearance at
a school assembly.

As a child in public elementary school, I vividly remember my first grade
teacher, Mrs. Hogan, a quiet and solemn woman, whip into a virtual whirling
dervish of nationalistic excitement as soon as the pledge ended. We were led in
spirited versions not only of the “Star Spangled Banner,” but also “America the
Beautiful” and, inexplicably, “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” It was in the last one
where she really made her mark—the same women who methodically wrote her name on
the blackboard every morning would gesture up a storm, with arms flailing on the
“grand” beat and raised to the ceiling for the “high flying flag” part.
Fortunately, I did not sit in the front row because I can only imagine the
spittle that was flying by the finale of the song.

Later, thankfully, I went to private school, where we weren’t as beholden to the
country’s history as we were to the school’s traditions. We had assemblies
several times a week (indoors, in a specially designated hall). I don’t recall
any singing, except for when the school’s Glee Club performed, and I am fairly
certain they only sang songs in Medieval Greek or Latin. However, when it was
time for Commencement, we practiced the songs as if our lives depended on it.
Because, in a way they did; a sour note or poor diction during the ceremony
would mar the over-achieving perfection that is a Boston all-girls’ school, and
if you were the cause, you wouldn’t get into a good college, never get a job or
have a family, and undoubtedly die an early and painful death.

I never recall actually being taught the words to any of the patriotic gems that
remain the staple of United States public schools, and perhaps that is why
generations of Americans do not actually know the words to these songs, let
alone the meaning. But in pursuit of a first-rank College Preparatory education,
nothing is left to chance, and we spent weeks memorizing every stanza of equally
obtuse and tortured lyrics, but ones that apparently paid homage to institutions
that are not the American Flag. In fact, one song was actually about merry old
England—the song was from a William Blake work called “Jerusalem,” and I
remember wondering why a school full of Boston WASPs were singing about Israel.
The other musical mainstay of Commencement was a whit trickier to master than
Blake’s alliteration about England’s “pleasant pastures”—the song (whose name I
do not recall) had a line that went “Give me your Chariot of Fire.”
Unfortunately, I was in school around the time the Academy Award-winning film
“Chariots of Fire” came out, and I cannot tell you the agony of trying to get
400 girls to not botch that line in rehearsal, lest we have to sing it one more
time. But the good news was, those of us who did not possess pitch that was up
to the school’s standards were instructed merely to move our lips to the music;
yes, I was a mouth mover. So I could have lip-synced all sorts of scandalous
things while my more talented sisters were earnestly asking for that Chariot of
Fire; sadly, I was not clever enough to do so, a regret I still have.