Trash Talk

I am guessing I spend more time than the ordinary person contemplating trash. As a psychologist, I am depressingly aware of what this preoccupation may reveal about me but, nevertheless, for years my mind has been consumed with "garbage in, garbage out."

I haven't always had primarily trashy thoughts. In fact, for many decades I gave waste nary a thought. I trace the etiology of my preoccupation with post-consumption to the day we moved into a house. A house we actually owned. And had to maintain. A house whose occupants seem to generate lots and lots of waste. And with no landlord or management company to make the garbage magically disappear.

As I unpacked during our move in August several years ago, I looked all over the house and yard for a place to put our trash. Surely, our lovely historic house, which came with central air conditioning, vintage gas stove and Japanese bath, had trash cans.  We had previously lived in apartments, condominiums and rented houses, and trash cans had just always been there.  Where did one get a trash can? How did one fit a trash can in the car? And, most perplexing, when the time comes, how does one throw away a trash can? While I have since figured out the first two conundrums, I am still uncertain of the third.

In our city, we are allowed to have up to seven trash cans. I have no idea how the city's Department of Public Works, Trash and Waste Division came up with this calculus of receptacles-per-residential structure, but I did not recall seeing any neighbors with seven cans of refuse adorning their home on trash day. I went to our local hardware store, which had in stock four cans with handles and wheels, so I purchased four cans with handles and wheels. I learned that our subcntracted trash service, Athen's Trash--implying that our garbage is destined to be a future archeologist's dream--will take whatever trash is "in" the can.

And since we are paying a private company to remove our city's waster, I make sure our cans are filled to the brim every Monday. If a can is a little low Sunday evening, I will blow through a box of cereal just to be able to throw away something bulky to fill the precious space. I have been tempted to hoard those styrofoam packing peanuts just to have something to fill the cans with when they are not up to capacity.

But more often, we have too much garbage, and I have to surreptitiously throw away items on the sly, such as at gas station trash cans or at public parks. We have had our four cans so completely filled that even the addition of a gum wrapper would make them topple Jenga-style. The most dramatic example of this is when we attempted to trash our ping-pong table. We took off the legs and rolled the green table top into our trash area in our driveway. We noticed good old Athens didn't take the hulking mass of plywood for several weeks. I suspected they were being sticklers for the "in" the trash can bylaw, so I took a saw and hacked the table into trash-repository-size pieces. Problem solved.

I am a more than a little wary of the sanitation-collection process, due to earlier negative experiences. Believe it or not, I have actually received citations from Sanitation Departments in two different states (actually, one was a Commonwealth,  not a state). I had not been aware that one could commit illegalities involving garbage, aside from perhaps littering on the highway. One such ticket was for throwing a bag of trash in a private dumpster in Boston. The only way I can imagine that they were able to identify it was my trash was by going through the Hefty bag's contents to identify the owner. I felt sort of privileged that a fledgling garbologist took such an interest in my refuse. I was fined $25. Another $25 fine was levied when we moved to Park Slope, Brooklyn, and deigned to put recyclable-worthy trash into a non-recyclable trash can.

Who knew throwing away stuff was so damned complicated?

Prior to moving into our home, I had never had cause to purchase a trash receptacle of any kind. Well, this is not completely true. I, of course, have gone through perhaps dozens of those smaller kitchen trash cans. In fact, the purchase of our current kitchen garbage can was particularly humiliating. I was at The Container Store, with precise kitchen measurements in hand, attempting to gauge how many gallons of trash our can should be able to hold. I noticed that the store seemed to sell garbage bags that were not the usual 13-gallon Hefty size that I typically buy in bulk, on sale, at Target. I asked the perky sales person which trash can would work with the regular trash bags to be bought at stores other than The Container Store. The clerk fired a series of questions at me regarding my thoughts and feelings about garbage can "liners." I noticed that the priciest of the trash cans all had a steel insert that "lined" the can and seemed quite unnecessary to the process of temporarily storing waste. I can spot a sales pitch a mile away, and did not want to get suckered into a $200 trash can, so I quickly informed her we have no need for "liners." This stopped the sales clerk in her tracks as she apparently struggled to pleasantly interact with such a barbarian who did not suitably "line" her trash can. It wasn't until later that I realized that "liner" was TheContainerStoreSpeak for "trash bag," and I had described to her the practice of maintaining waste in our kitchen in a bagless recepetacle. I can only imagine how that story went over at the subsequent staff meeting. Good thing I usually order anonymously online anyway.

Law and Disorder

I am not a lawyer.

Nor am I a judge, paralegal, court clerk, or courtroom artist. I have never even been a juror, although I was once called for jury duty. Their mistake.

Despite having no direct professional connection whatsoever to the criminal justice system, I get a surprisingly large volume of mail from the court. The Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles, Traffic Division, to be specific.

The reason for the constant stream of missives from the judicial branch of my county government? The official reasons cited by the court vary with each letter, and are worded so convolutedly that even someone like me who enjoys convoluted wording can't make heads or tails of the actual charges. But after more than a decade of meeting the esteemed members of our highway patrol and receiving very civil letters on their behalf, via the court, I have figured out why I am so lucky to garner so much attention: I Am A Boston Driver.

I owned my first car--a vintage BMW 2002 I named "Mardou," after a character in a Jack Kerouac novel (doesn't everyone name their cars?)--while living in the even more vintage neighborhood of Beacon Hill in Boston. The streets were barely paved former cow paths, usually further narrowed by snowbanks or recycling bins. Driving in a congested, centuries-old city requires a sense of adventure, artistry and particularly good insurance coverage. Traffic lights, while very pretty with their flashing colors, are a mere suggestion, and parallel parking requires using bumpers for what they were named: bumping other cars. We do not bother with car washing, vanity license plates, or cars with multisyllabic names. Count Bostonians as the only people outside of Scandinavia who have ever seen an actual Saab.

I provide this brief overview to give the non-New Englander an understanding of the etiology of my apparently criminal behavior. I will note that in the several decades before I moved to Los Angeles, I don't recall ever receiving a traffic ticket. Sure, I had to slip the service station manager an extra $20 so Mardou would pass inspection. And, yes, I may have gone extended periods of time unknowingly driving on an expired license. But for the most part my driving record east of the Mississippi was untarnished.

Los Angeles has a reputation for being a laid-back, accepting bastion of diversity. In my experience, this has not been the case, at least when it comes to drivers. Though the L.A. justice system may be lenient to the wrongdoings of many of its flashiest citizens, I have found the LAPD and its brethren to be far less accepting of the personal and stylistic differences of some of its more humble folk.  It is the hard-working, well-meaning of us who suffer every time a man or woman in blue takes issue with an expertly executed U-turn on a one-way street, or an efficient left turn on an arrow that turned red with little warning, or an inability to immediately locate registration documents when opening the glove compartment yields a torrent of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish bags. Just because you have a gun and a shiny badge doesn't give you the right to interrupt my journey. Well, maybe it does in the letter of the law, but not so much in the spirit. I have places to go. Can't we all just get along?

The sum of my involuntary donations to the "Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Traffic Division" might make a hefty downpayment on a new car, and the number of "Certificates of Completion" I have earned from the court's online "Home Study"program would surely be at least a master's degree. However, I have to say that my all-time record for traffic citations actually occurred 3,000 miles away from Los Angeles--in Staten Island, NY, of all places. This was during the year we lived in New York. What I was doing on a highway in Staten Island has mercifully been blotted from my memory, but I was stopped for some infraction that was not articulated to me in a way that I could understand. Did I mention that I had the misfortune of being a female driving like a Boston driver in Staten Island with California license plates and a Boston Red Sox bumper sticker? That must have confused the hell out of the SIPD. He wrote me two tickets. For the same traffic stop. Is that even allowed? Luckily, I was moving out of state shortly after that anyway.

Lest you think that all my encounters with traffic law enforcement personnel have been negative, let me end with a heart-warming story. Not this most recent ticket, but the one before came just moments after a stare-down with the crossing guard at my son's school. It appeared to me as if he was allowing an entire busload of dependent-free elderly people to cross while we parents semi-patiently waited to make a left turn. I was so busy giving the guard (who I imagine is named Clyde or Gus) the evil eye that I did not notice that our town's PD was out in full force, ready to ticket hapless homeowners to increase the town's cashflow. I finally made my turn, wedged the car next to a parked one, and opened the driver's side backdoor for my son. Of course, being the neurotically safety conscious mom that I am, I wildly flailed my arms and did my best NBA pick defense to protect my son from any pedestrian or automotive activity. No sooner had I yelled "I love you" and revved up the engine than I heard a tap on my window. My preschool daughter was still in the car, so I had to be on good behavior. No, officer, I had not realized the crossing guard's orange flag was still up. No, officer, I didn't know I was impeding traffic. No, officer, I had no idea that was a moving violation. But, officer, I was protecting my son's safety with a mom-body-block. He remained unconvinced. Oh well, another triplicate to file in the glove compartment.

The good news is that this all went down on the very last day of "Community Helpers Week" at my daughter's preschool. Yay! In case you, like me, assume a "community helper" is either an urban planner or a municipal attorney, I recently learned the term includes any professional, paraprofessional or volunteer who does virtually anything identifiable in a community. You, too, may be a community helper and not even know it! Anyway, when I dropped my daughter off at school she was very excited to report to her teacher how mommy was stopped by a community helper on the way to school. What a happy coincidence!

Opining Day

Ah, yes. Baseball season is officially upon us.

For those of us who are die-hard baseball fans, the 150 days between the last game of the World Series, and Opening Day might as well be 150 years. In fact, anxiety starts to build up early on in the playoffs, not because of any concern about who will win (statistically speaking, one’s favorite team was probably eliminated before the regular season even ended), but because the countdown to baseball hiatus is on in earnest. Five months of no baseball to obsess over means a whole lot of down time with nothing to do.

Luckily, in this era of the 24-hour news cycle, and competition for news coverage, the off-season no longer means one has to go cold-turkey. There exists a parallel universe of “Baseball in Theory,” consisting of endless websites, sports channels, publications, blogs, listserves that help keep the baseball addict from experimenting with football or basketball. No sooner is the Major League Baseball season officially over in early November—yes, November!—than the recapping of the season begins. Then the speculation over who will win the annual player awards. Then the actual awards. Then the breakdown of who won the awards. Then the discussion of how the winning or not winning of the aforementioned award will impact the player’s ability to negotiate a better contract. Then coverage of the “Hot Stove” winter meetings where owners sign free agents, which may or may not include the aforementioned players who may or may not have won the aforementioned awards. Then analysis of each deal that was made or not made. And this barely gets the baseball fan through the winter holidays.

Seventy five percent of our family loves baseball. Since this constitutes a Super Majority in our household, and includes 100 percent of the family’s planners and financers of family outings, we tend to gravitate toward baseball-oriented activities. Annual treks to Spring Training in Arizona, a trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Major League Fan Fests, baseball and memorabilia stores. Of course, we do not endorse a mob rule mentality. Hotels for such trips are chosen to be amenable to our family’s token non-baseball fan, so in those moments when she is not being dragged to a baseball event, she can briefly splash in a nice pool or get dropped off at a resort’s Kids Club, while the rest of us go to a game.  

Our statistical outlier offspring aside, I have to say, as a family, we are collectively well-informed about baseball goings-on. My son in particular is a marvel of historical and strategic information, spanning 100 years of the sport. He has classmates who like the sport, and they trade stories about games and players. But, to be honest, the depth of my son’s understanding of the intricacies and mechanics of the sport are beyond even most seasoned adult fans. To the untrained eye (and ear), my son and his classmates probably seem to be having typical 4^th grade banter about the outcome of the previous night’s games. However, in my mind I imagine it is like Stephen Hawking making small-talk with a second grader at an elementary school Science Fair. Sure, they are both technically talking about the same subject…..

Recently we have had reason to be optimistic that our lone baseball holdout seems to be coming around. We signed her up for T-Ball softball with her friends and, thankfully, their uniforms are a color (red) that she would tolerate wearing, even though her preference would be for a pink dress rather than pants, cleats and a visor. She has proven to be an enthusiastic fielder, dutifully squatting in “ready position” before charging at any ball that dribbles toward. The “No Child Left Behind” philosophy at work in 5-year-old T-Ball means that the inning is not over until every child has “batted” and reached base. This can take a very long time, especially when there are shoes to be tied and ponytails to smooth and stuffed animals to wedge out of children’s hands so they can hold a bat. So by the third or fourth batter, my husband, son and I have to turn a deaf ear to groans of “Is it over YET?” But that is not to say her interest in baseball is not growing every day. By the second game of the season, she cheerfully bobbed around the bases with nary a peep, her hands clutching the top of her batting helmet, which did not fit snugly over her head because of a fashionably large scrunchie keeping her hair in place. She stopped at third, caught me eye on the sidelines, and asked: “Can I have a snack now?”

So Not The Fonz

When I was in elementary school, I had an enormous poster of The Fonz on my wall. I actually liked Pottsie better, but I don't think there were any Pottsie posters for sale at the time. So my homage to the show "Happy Days" was Fonzie giving a big thumb's up, long before upward facing thumbs were co-opted by pre-school teachers to indicate a child had used the potty correctly.

The fact that I preferred Pottsie to the ultra cool Arthur Fonzarelli was already an early sign that I was not going to be one of the "cool" crowd. Maybe briefly in college, when I did a pretty spot-on impression of a tortured intellectual. But, hey, Henry Winkler was a Yale graduate, so it makes sense that Ivy League angst would be channeling the King of Cool himself.

My oldest child is at the age where he is kind of getting that his mom is a little dorky. I use the word "awesome" a lot, and not just when I am describing weighty philosophical matters. And not just in private when I am trying to build family self-esteem. I showcase my unhipness by yelling out awkward phrases at Little League games, usually incorporating the apparently humiliating "A" word. "Awesome cut!" I bellow when a player takes a big swing, but misses. "Awesome D!" I have been known to shriek after a competent catch of a fly ball. I think I have one more season before I am banished from games.

To make matters worse, at work I meet teenagers who are in street gangs, have elaborate tattoos, and are savvy to the ways of the world. I am a Clinical Psychologist at a large, urban Juvenile Hall. That means jail for kids. Yes, kids end up in jail. I read a court report for a teen from a part of town where very few kids end up in juvey, and her mother had told the judge that she called the police on her daughter so they could take her to juvenile hall, which the mom apparently thought was some sort of dormitory with kindly counselors. Sorry, mom, if LAPD is involved, your child is not being taken to a slumber party. So I guess I am not the only mom who is uncool.

The kids--called "minors" by probation, and "clients" by mental health--tell me about a lot of talents and interests they have. Some write poetry, paint, play sports, do hair. There are a lot of terrific, smart kids in juvey, who were born into really sad circumstances. I learn a lot from them and generally they tolerate my inability to use the right lingo to describe their interests and vices. The first time I assessed a teen for "pot" use and got a blank stare, although this kid had a pretty intense marijuana habit, I knew it was better not to even try to be hip.

One 16-year-old boy I interviewed had been a gang member for a number of years, and had a slew of gang related "tats." He was soft-spoken and a kid of few words. He wasn't giving too much away. I asked him what he liked to do for fun. He lit up and said what sounded to me like "beads." I asked him what he made. The light in his eye flickered and he sort of grunted, "huh?" Necklaces, bracelets, keychains? I was getting excited because I have dabbled in jewelry making myself. "Uh, what?" he asked, staring at me. Beads, what did he make with the beads, I continued to probe, desperate at this point not to lose the momentum. "Beads? I said Beets," he informed me, the brightness in his face now completely overshadowed by confusion and scorn. "Oh, you garden?" I queried hopefully. "Beats. Like drums. I drum," he said exasperatedly. "Oh, cool," I said, defeated.

 

Country Crock

I have been stalking Whole Foods, in search of fava beans. Apparently beans have seasons, and favas have been in hibernation.

After months of regularly parking haphazardly and rushing into two different stores, making a beeline for the produce section, I finally found them. Granted, I know so little about produce I am not sure whether beans are vegetables, legumes--maybe legumes are vegetables??--or some other species entirely. And fava beans are identical to other kinds of beans-in-pods at Whole Foods, so I probably could have been feasting on a cousin bean for months already without being any the wiser. In fact, had the Whole Foods staff accidentally put a sign that said "Fava Beans" in front of a pork roast, I would have bought it without thinking twice. But the beans they had in the bin today looked vaguely similar to the fava beans I recalled eating last year, and there was even a sign that said "Fava Beans" to confirm my hunch. So I grabbed handful after handful and jammed them into the plastic produce bag.

Why the obsession with a bitter-tasting bean that is only remotely edible after putting in an inordinate amount of time and effort? Because last year I inadvertently made a really good side dish with fava beans. I do not have the attention span to follow recipes, and we rarely have ingredients on hand that would conform to an actual recipe published in an actual cookbook. So I pretty much "wing" everything I make. Most of the time, my meals are pretty bad, so there is no reason to try to recreate them. But the garlic-stir-fry fava recipe was something special.  And I have been desperately trying to relive that past glory ever since.

Despite living at an Axis of Organic where Whole Foods, Trader Joes and Farmers' Markets all magically converge, we once actually ventured to a "working farm"  to pick our own fruits and vegetables. Many guilt-ridden families apparently make this farm journey so that they will never experience the humiliation of their child announcing in class that vegetables come "from the supermarket." I am not saying that I personally have lived this nightmare, just that I have a friend who had a friend who did.....

So sometime last spring, we sucked it up and drove almost an hour to have ourselves a good, old-fashioned day in the "country." You can tell a farm that is open to city folk mauling its goods by the homemade signs hawking "Pick Ur Own" on the side of the road. Apparently the country folks' perception of city folk is the latter can't read or spell. Thankfully, the farm we chose also had a hotdog stand and a smoothie booth, so we knew we wouldn't starve. By the way, had I known that nature included nitrate-laced faux pork products, I would have gone au naturel years ago!

The farm had a large selection of food growing on trees, vines, and bushes, such as boysenberries, which I had always thought was a joke name for a fruit that was meant to be the punchline of a bawdy joke. Who knew boysenberries really existed in nature? Cool! We decided to skip the Verdolaga and Tatsoi in favor of strawberries and salad items. We had the option of using a provided kiddie wagon and trekking out into the fields, or taking a hayride shuttle. A no-brainer! We can get a kiddie wagon at Toys R'Us any day! But a hayride and not having to walk a quarter of a mile in the heat with kids in tow? Sign us up! By the way, for those of you with delicate constitutions, the minute you climb onto a bale of hay, you will understand why a certain allergic reaction is called "hayfever." Note to self: Get Claritin before the next trip to the farm.

The good news is we didn't have much to carry much back because my daughter ate her weight in strawberries while we were out in the field. But out of guilt and fear of prosecution, we started tearing anything remotely leafy or bumpy from the plants en route to the parking lot. Lettuce? Who doesn't like a fresh salad? Radishes? Sure! Cauliflower? Keep it coming! Beans? Yeah! So by the time we made it to the cashier, we were ready to open our own salad bar. All we needed was a sneezeguard.

The bad news is when you have absolutely no idea what you are doing, you end up with mounds of produce in proportions that are not conducive to making anything anyone would want to eat. One or two eggplants go a long way, it turns out. So if you have picked eight, you are going to have a big, bumpy, purple pile on the kitchen counter for a long time to come. And you quickly realize there is a limit to how much chard a family of four can consume before the vegetable equivalent of fruit flies discover the stash.

The one bright spot to cluelessly grasping at leaves and beans from vines is once in an organic blue moon, you get something good. In this case, the fava beans. These were an afterthought, a last-minute grab en route to the farm check-out. When we got home to the beauty of paved roads and sushi restaurants, I stared at these bumpy pods and had no idea what to do with them. Do you eat them in the pods? Do they have seeds to be removed? Are there living creatures inside those pods? A quick Google search assured me that nothing Alien-like would emerge from the protective coating. I enlisted my son for a fun afternoon of pea-shuckin', similar to what I imagined they did on Little House on the Prairie (both the book and TV version). Even though I billed the activity as an opportunity to "bond," my son lasted about 30 seconds before sneaking out to shoot baskets.

Preparing fava beans requires shucking, de-skinning, and blanching. Three gerunds with which I had not previously been familiar. By the way, save the imbibing (a more familiar gerund) until at least step three. Trust me. Once the beans were ready to be officially made into a recipe, I was done with the Google searches. So I took the ingredients that I refer to as "bachelor staples"--olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper--and combined them in a skillet. Yum!

Unfortunately, when I tried to recreate the dish the next day with the remaining beans, I realized that this cooking-without-recipe thing isn't as foolproof as I had been led to believe by the Food Network. Whatever I did the second time was not nearly as tasty as my maiden attempt. Since I was then out of our hand-picked fava beans, I continued to buy the legumes at Farmers' Markets and Whole Foods--each time vowing to match the initial deliciousness of my fava bean concoction. Sometimes I forgot to use the fava beans before they went bad, and they ended up being discarded in a sad, brown, wilted state. Other times the dish came close... so close that I continued my quest with dried fava beans even when fresh ones were out of season. And now that fava beans are back in season, perhaps another trip to the farm will be in order. Or not. I bet if I look hard enough, I can even find Verdolaga and Tatsoi at Whole Foods.

Comparative Parenting

My family is loud.

But we are loud for a reason. We have several televisions and several computers. But since we live in a home with many rooms, none of this technology is housed in the same room. So, it follows, at any given time, none of my family members are in the same room at the same time. So how do we communicate? By shouting from room-to-room, of course. I didn’t say we had a good reason for being loud.

Yes, the official protocol in our home is to address each other face-to-face, using an “inside voice.” But this is not always realistic when you are a mom firing off multiple directives at children while simultaneously checking email and trying to beat your all-time high score in Webkinz’ Color Storm. When my family shriek at each other from room to room, I fulfill my mom duty by bellowing “Stop Yelling!” even louder from the comfort of my desk chair. By the way, our house was built in 1927 and has very thick, soundproof walls.

Having never been a parent before, I had little sense of whether our family interactions were anywhere on the bell curve. So I broached the subject of inter-room communication with some fellow moms. However, I carefully chose who I asked. Any mom who seemed too composed or took a Zen-like approach to child-rearing was out. I apparently picked likeminded moms because I was assured by my sample that they have their moments of engaging in “outside voice” talk while inside the confines of their homes. I felt better.

But I do not know for sure whether these moms truly are screechers, or were just humoring me. Because when you live in a house and travel by car, parenting is a private matter. Behind closed doors, you are free to yell, eat with your hands, sing off-key, watch bad TV, and engage in any number of socially unsanctioned activities, without fear of embarrassment or judgment.

However, there are ways to penetrate the “Cone of Silence” of suburban living: eavesdropping on your neighbors in their backyards and through open windows. During the spring days when it is too warm for the heater and too cool for air conditioning, I get an idea of how my unflattering parenting moments stack up against my neighbors’. Had it not been for auditory glimpses into our neighbor’s family lives, I never would have known that one neighbor’s child didn’t start her Science Fair project until the day before the fair. Or that another neighbor kid has a temper and gets really mouthy with his father. And if I thought we watched a lot of TV, we are absolute luddites compared to one set of neighbors.

Several years ago we lived in Brooklyn. Living in shared buildings, with no backyards, and where you are constantly walking, means your parenting skills are on constant display. For someone who is used to keeping separate sets of all parenting supplies (snacks, wipes, water, make-up, gum, change of clothing) in both the car and home, there is an enormous learning curve to this public parenting. Hair has to be combed, diapers packed, boogers cleaned, all before venturing out; no longer can these acts be done at a red light or a parking lot.

Parenting in the public arena seems to have a whole different set of priorities. In my experience, Brooklynites show a great deal of concern when a baby is missing a sock. My daughter was stroller age at the time, and enjoyed removing her left sock and hurling it in the street. Also in my experience, Brooklynites appear to calmly stroll with their toddlers while both mother and child are perfectly groomed, engaging in numerous “teachable moments” by observing the wonders of nature, while singing European children’s songs on pitch, with all socks intact. As a temporary Brooklynite, I was not up to any of the aforementioned tasks, and felt the looks of pity as I balanced ripping grocery bags on my shoulders as my child pulled the scrunchy out of her hair, knocking the stroller enough so my ice coffee spilled onto the handlebar tray, causing me to curse/trip/further spill.

During our year in New York, I signed my son up for some sort of martial arts class. He had taken a similar class back home in Los Angeles, and it was one of the few activities that didn’t have a waiting list dating back to when the child was in utero. The class was at 5:30, giving me time to return from work, pay the nanny and take my daughter to pick up my son at his after-school program. The karate class was 15 blocks away. No problem, I previously lived in New York and routinely walked dozens of blocks at a time, usually with a goal of reaching a shopping destination. Nothing can motivate like a good sale. However, when I calculated the distance from school to karate, I didn’t factor in dawdling, heavy backpacks, bathroom stops, stroller gridlock, hot weather, cold weather, rainy weather, snowy weather, layers of clothing stripped off, layers of clothing put back on. Why didn’t we take one of those famous NYC buses, you may ask? Well, who knew that no strollers allowed on the bus unless they are folded up? Like that would work with two fidgety kids and enough gear to survive for years in the wilderness. And, at the end of our journey: a second-floor karate studio with 18 steep stairs and no elevator. How’s that for adding insult to injury. And to top it all off: A child who didn‘t really like karate after all.  

TV, or Not TV, That is the Question

"Mommy, why are we so poor?" my 10-year-old son asked recently, out of the blue.

This was a perplexing question, since I had not really considered us so low on the totem pole of life. Both my husband and I are employed to our educational capacity with doctoral-level jobs. We live in a community that by many objective and subjective measures would be considered fairly desirable. We have a house with enough room for everyone, and with a back and a front yard. My son had already traveled on three continents by the time he was 5 years old. I would venture to say we are firmly in the middle of the pack.

So I asked my son--who, by the way, is the antithesis of a materially deprived child--why he thought we were down on our luck.

"Because our TVs suck," he replied. Actually, he used a much milder word, but the word "suck" seems to best reflect the disdain in his voice and facial expression.

OK, he had a point. we have four TVs, none of which were purchased in this millennium. One has a built-in VCR slot, all are boxy and heavy enough to do real damage if dropped on a foot, and all have screens that are somewhere in the 20something-inch range.

I get that people nowadays (and by "nowadays," I mean the past 25 years) prefer larger, sleeker televisions. People opine about their HDTV and surround sound. And I, truthfully, have never met an electronic gadget that I didn't want. And, despite our presumed impoverished state, I will admit to having purchased many, many of these electronic devices. Just not TVs.

But the problem with our hulking, but deceptively small-screened televisions is they still work. What does one do with four 80-pound boxes of transistors? We could donate them to charity, I suppose. But we have previously had items rejected from Goodwill and Salvation Army, and that is a humiliation no one needs to endure more than once in a lifetime. The televisions are too big to fit in our trash cans, which would mean arranging for a special collection by our local waste management service. This is nether pleasant nor cheap. I don't know which family member is going to lug hundreds of pounds of dated machinery to our driveway and risk neighbors seeing how clunky out technology is. These TVs have been with us for probably six or seven residences, and the stress of having to reinstall cables and DVD players and extension cords is just too much to contemplate. And, did I mention the TVs still work?

I made a mental note never to let him go over a friend's house again, lest the rest of our belongings seem even more sucky in comparison.