Monthly Archives: January 2013

Wandering in the Land of What If

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Picture taken by Christian Koehn (Fragwürdig), from Wiki Commons

Picture taken by Christian Koehn (Fragwürdig), from Wiki Commons

Lately, I’ve been wondering what the American appetite for post-apocalyptic stories—both movies and books—says about our culture. We are constantly bombarded with The Hunger Games, Children of Men, Book of Eli, Matrix and similar stories. And there are more on the way. I recently saw trailers for After Earth with Will and Jaden Smith and Oblivion with Tom Cruise. What attracts us to these themes?

It Could Happen

At first, I thought it meant that many people felt powerless and doomed—maybe we aren’t headed for irreversible damage right this minute, but it could happen in the near future. The idea that we could be nearly destroyed via nuclear holocaust, disease or asteroid isn’t so hard to imagine. Those possibilities already exist. Well OK, I can’t take destruction by asteroid seriously, but the other two aren’t farfetched. Bombing by rogue state (re: 9/11), drug-resistant tuberculosis, and the Ebola virus already exist. Today, even the flu is killing people.

The “we’re all doomed” mindset may be part of our culture, but I don’t think that’s the main reason behind our cultural fascination with dystopias. I don’t see people flocking to see Amour, a movie about an aging couple coping with her illness and impending death—that definitely could happen, but it’s way too real and scary for a lot of people, including me.

What If?

Tons of movies and books like The Handmaid’s Tale, Children of Men, and On the Beach start with a speculative premise—What if the world were nearly destroyed, how would survivors behave? These stories explore human behavior as well as the strange new worlds. What If generally becomes a cautionary tale—because resources are scare or fertility is at risk, the government / a corporation/ society imposes dehumanizing restrictions on the survivors. Forced childbearing, extinction, or forced suicide are the frightening new realities. What makes the stories scary is our recognition that governments, corporations and societies can and do run amuck—it’s not so farfetched.

Test Your Mettle

Some of the emotional appeal of post-apocalyptic books and movies is that we identify with the heroes and imagine that if we were faced with the hardships, we’d be resilient survivors. We’d outsmart the evil government and resist being brainwashed. We’d escape. We feel more powerful than we really are.

Well At Least My Life is Better Than That

Or maybe it’s that by briefly immersing ourselves in the horrible world pictured in a movie or book puts the shortcomings of our own lives in perspective—at least I’m not scrounging around bombed out buildings for scraps of food or I don’t have to fight to death to save my sister . . .

A variation on that theory is that getting caught up with a dramatic and frightening plot is a safe thrill like riding a roller coaster. Scary, but in the end, you know you’ll walk away unscathed.

But do we walk away unscathed? Or do these movies and books thrill us but make catastrophic events seem acceptable?

If you like this genre, do any of my theories fit you? Which ones?  If not, what draws you in?

WHO IS THE MAYOR?

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January 18, 2013 140She’s the lady in the red sweater, and you, the den leader, are hoping, hoping that the Cub Scout sitting next to her, won’t turn his head and let out his humongous sneeze that you have been watching build for the past minute as he inhaled, inhaled again, and yet again. After he turns his head away from her, at least you hope he did, because at the very last moment you just couldn’t bear to look andJanuary 18, 2013 097 dropped your eyes, he exploded, after which you bring your eyes up to see the same Scout staring at the Mayor’s hair and you hope, really hope, that he doesn’t reach out and touch her head or her sweater or her arm or her hand, and you know he might do any of these or all of these. He likes to TOUCH, and he really looks like he’s going to do something even though at the moment he is busy palming his nose with both hands, and all you can think of is that he is a flu carrier and he is about to hand it to the Mayor.

Who is the Mayor?

She’s the one with the cheery personality who asks your 13 Cub Scouts the question, “Well, what do you think a mayor does?” which really, really makes you wish that you had remembered to discuss communicating with respect when a Scout responds with, January 18, 2013 102“She runs the city blabbly blab blab.”

Who is the Mayor?

She’s the one who is very articulate, but when she asks the Scouts what makes a good citizen, you want to take the jaws of life and extricate the memory chip from all the small electronics in the room. The meeting with the Mayor will only last for half an hour, but still that is too long for the parent who can’t look up from his smart phone for the entire time and the sibling of a Scout who has her face so close to her Nintendo DS screen that you are sure that she is suffering from partial blindness. I bet they can’t tell you that the Mayor’s sweater is a vibrant red, sharper than any cardinal that you have seen this winter.

Who is the Mayor?

She’s the one who uses her special badge to let the Scouts see the council chambers and sit in the overstuffed chairs that wheel around even though they immediately grab January 18, 2013 105for the skinny microphones that snake upwards. The first thing the Scouts learn is that the microphones are on and you are sure that they January 18, 2013 110are going to snap them in two as they yank them toward themselves. After you, the den leader, reign in chaos by yelling that ALL hands must IMMEDIATELY go into their own lap, only then do you dare take a breath.

Who is the Mayor?

January 18, 2013 201She is why you ask all the Scouts to remove their non-scouting headwear for the group picture. And you hope that the Scout who has his scouting cap tilted liked a gang member will straighten it for the picture in case it goes viral.

Ultimately, Richfield Mayor, Debbie Goettel, is the gracious woman who communicates citizenship to your Cub Scouts. You hope they will remember at least one thing that she says, even if the thing theyJanuary 18, 2013 203 remember is that she is the one who organized the awesome one-hour tour with the fire department.

Because you never know . . .

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The seventh graders filed into the conference room where me and the other hospital employees waited to meet them. For the past six weeks, we have been corresponding via email as part of a mentoring program established by a nearby public school. Most of the emails focused on answering a standard set of questions about working life.

Only five mentees made it to the pizza lunch—several were out sick, one forgot his permission slip, and two of the boys lost their nerve—in other words, a typical seventh grade experience. The five brave girls in attendance ranged from a small girl who hadn’t gotten her growth yet to a tall girl with a womanly figure. Hard to believe they are both 12-year-olds.

I was disappointed that my mentee was out sick, but I was also a little relieved that I wouldn’t have to engage in an awkward interrogation—what often passes for conversation between adults and kids who don’t know each other very well.

Seeing the students took me back to seventh grade when I was part of two programs—a verse choir and a binary math class. I can no longer recall why I was part of verse choir—did I choose it? Or was I selected because I loved English class?

In verse choir, we memorized and performed several poems as a group. My favorite—Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Bells”—was our winning entry in a verse choir contest. Imagine a dozen voices chanting lines like these from Poe’s lengthy poem—

Keeping, time, time, time

In a sort of Runic rhyme

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells.

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

We loved it and so did the judges.

The same young spirited nun who organized verse choir started an advanced math class that was held after school. I was never a math wizard, but in seventh grade, I did well enough to be invited. We learned about the binary number system (don’t ask me to use it now!) In 1967, computers and programming languages like COBOL were in their infancy. Perhaps Sister David thought she was preparing us for our future, or maybe she wanted to treat us to fun math—I don’t know. I was semi-clueless about the point of the programs in the same way as the seventh graders visiting the hospital were.

Being part of these programs made me feel special and broadened my sense of possibilities. Today, I understand Sr. David’s investment in us and I am grateful she saw potential in me.

That’s why I agreed to participate in the mentoring program—because you never know when you might spark something in someone else.

Perils of Being a Writer

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERACrystel shuffles out of her bedroom, rubbing her eyes. The rest of us have been up for hours. In fact, Antonio has about used up all of his allotted time with electronics. I briefly look up at her. She’s grown taller in the night, I think. She stretches out her form before flopping down next to me on the couch.

“Good morning, dear.”

She mumbles, “Good morning.” She leans casually towards me. We’re now bumping shoulders.

I return to reviewing my manuscript and drop my eyes to the computer.

“I knew it,” she says. “I knew it! I knew you were going to say it one day!” She jumps up and runs out of the room.

“What!” I say, alarmed.

I look down at the writing on my laptop and immediately know what happened. There in black and white it says Antonio and Crystel aren’t my children….

“Crystel! Crystel! Come back here!” I leap off the couch. Yelling upstairs, I say, “Antonio is Crystel up there!”

“No, she’s not.”

Rushing down the basement steps, I holler, “Crystel, you need to come back and talk to me. Crystel, where are you!” It’s dark and quiet in the basement.

I rush back upstairs to where Antonio is. “Antonio are you telling me the truth? Is Crystel upstairs?”

“She’s not up here. She never came up here.”

I’m in a bit of a panic. What could Crystel think, and if she won’t talk to me, then what? And is it true that she has always thought that I was going to say that she’s not mine?

“Crystel, you need to come here.”

I hear behind me, “You couldn’t find me.” She seems pleased with this.

“No, I couldn’t find you. Now, sit down.” I’m relieved she actually does.

“If you are going to read something that I am writing, you need to read all of it or ask a question. You reading part of a sentence is like coming into a conversation part way or seeing only part of an elephant. You aren’t getting the whole story.”

“Now, look at this.” I point to the paragraph: Antonio and Crystel aren’t my children to own or to have or to keep. Finding their birthmoms, reuniting the mom with their child, promising to bring Antonio and Crystel back every two years to Guatemala continues restoring me to health.

“What this means is that you aren’t an object for me to own. You are your own person. Not mine. Now if we scroll up here, it says, When I say to them, you can count on me, I absolutely mean it.” I look in her eyes. “You are my daughter. I would do anything for you.”

This seems to satisfy her. Crystel is often interested in what I write. When she came upon me reviewing the last blog I wrote about her being interested in the bathroom scale, she read it. She laughed and laughed. Now she will have another blog to read: The Perils of Being a Writer.

At bedtime we will have that other talk, in case she really is expecting to hear me say she isn’t really my daughter. Hmmmm.

Resigning as MVP of the Eating Team

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Screen shot 2013-01-01 at 8.21.20 PMI like the idea of a New Year and New Year’s resolutions. I want to believe that change is possible.

Achievable improvement has lots of appeal. So at very least, I’ll lose the weight I gained as a MVP on the Eating Team (Best All-Around Consumption – entrées, sweets, snacks, and alcohol). Nothing but fruits, vegetables and low-fat healthy everything from now until at least March.

But seriously, in a perverse way, I enjoy being virtuous . . . for a little while. I’ll obsessively calculate my Weight Watcher points (but I’ll spare you the details). I’ll be pleased when I no longer need to cram myself into my jeans and disguise my newly acquired spare tire with big sweaters.

I have other loftier goals—to be more generous, to be more tolerant, to think before I speak, to improve my writing. But I regularly make those resolutions and then backslide, so I’m realistic about the resolutions—I recognize that all I’m likely to accomplish is incremental improvements.

I have also learned that any time I’m dissatisfied with how I’m spending my days, I need to recalibrate—I can’t wait until another New Year rolls around. Taking stock and making resolutions is an ongoing process for me.

At heart, I’m an optimist. Lodged in my belief that I can change is a belief that the world can change, too. I’m hopeful about America—despite the political stupidity and individual selfishness that is rampant in our culture. I still believe Americans collectively strive to be better than we have been, and at very least, we will make incremental improvements in 2013.

But for right now, I’m focused on eating a juicy tangerine—a change I can control.