Thoughts are hard

Which is why I began two blogposts since the last one and scrapped them midway through. But I'm feeling the need to write something. So I'm cheating and using a modified prompt from One Minute Writer. The prompt is to write about a memorable summer activity you enjoyed as a child, but I decided to reminisce about a summer activity that I did not enjoy. I know, I'm so subversive sometimes.

My mom had a loosely-enforced summertime rule regarding the wearing of innertubes, swimmies, and the like in the pool: You have to wear them until you pass swim lessons. I say "loosely-enforced" because, like most of her rules, I could generally whine and wheedle my way out of them (don't judge my mom. You don't know the piercing hell that was/is my tantrum voice). However, it would seem a rule such as this--one designed for safety--wouldn't be up for compromise. But, dear reader, let me tell you: Had she actually enforced it, I would have been wearing my red rubber innertube-swimsuit until I moved out of the house. I never learned to swim.

It's not that I'm afraid of water. On the contrary, I always look forward to pool excursions. It's that I am supremely unathletic. My body simply refuses to move the way it should. Water gets up my nose, no matter how hard I try to blow out underwater. Diving inevitably ends in bellyflops. A simple freestyle stroke turns to a doggie paddle, and a float always ends in a sink. As recently as last summer friends tried to get me to execute a successful float on my back. I was relaxed, head back, arms out, and my legs still refused to remain horizontal. I'm very dense, you see. I can't tread water in the same way that other people can, either. The only way I can stay afloat in one place is by kicking as fast as I can like I'm riding a unicycle, while simulataneously sweeping my arms. If I try to do it slowly, the sea eats me.

Oh, and I still hold my nose when I go underwater. GOD HELP YOU if you dunk me before I have a chance to pinch my nostrils shut.

I can't recall the order in which I was signed up for swim lessons, but I do recall at least three separate summers in which my mom attempted to instill aquatic knowledge in my young mind. There was Mr. Doug, a large hairy man with a bushy mustache. I believe his swim lessons were in his home pool, but I could be wrong. We have a home movie of this debacle. I'm blissfully doggie paddling along in arm swimmies, a giant styrofoam q-tip under my armpits for extra support. I laugh and splash, and make silly jokes with Mr. Doug. Then Mr. Doug takes away my q-tip, THAT MONSTER. I flail and cry, my head dipping underwater and begging for mercy. After a good ten minutes of watching me sputter and die, Mr. Doug finally gives up and deposits me, still clinging to his hairy chest, on the side of the pool. There I curl up into an angry ball, betrayed.

I don't remember the second swim lessons at all, except that a pretty blonde lady (maybe a teen, who knows) taught it. Also, a failure, because that led to the final swim lesson at a local country club. I think I was about 8 or 9 by that time, and had to be placed with some younger kids. That probably didn't encourage me to take the lessons very seriously, and I recall mostly splashing around and ignoring the instructor. One day we had a CPR lesson, and instead of getting to be in the pool we had to sit on the side and watch demonstration after demonstration. I remember being hot, and thinking I can go into the water if I make it look like an accident. So I slipped off the side into the deep end and let myself sink to the bottom. Then, I kicked my way back up to the top, expecting the instructor to yell at me. Instead, she praised me for knowing how to get back up, and I was pleased that my deception was successful. THAT is what I learned from those lessons.

I'm pretty sure that because I disliked swim lessons so much as a child, and was so awful to my instructors, it's my cosmic fate that someday I'll be the sole survivor of a plane crash only to land in the middle of a small, relatively shallow lake/river/pond/swimmin' hole, and that I will drown right then and there with onlookers lamenting "if only she learned to swim." Or that one day I will have a child that I take to the beach, and he will get caught in a rip tide, and I will only be able to shout helplessly from the beach, "I'M SORRY JOHNNY. MOMMY HAS TO HOLD HER NOSE IN THE WATER AND SHE CAN'T REACH YOU WITH ONLY ONE ARM, NOW CAN SHE?"

Even worse: My mother will show up one day and demand I wear my swimmies again. She would.

This infant is actually rescuing me.

Passport 2 Teen Pregnancy

Thanksgiving is coming up, and this year we're spending it with Boyfriend's family. Boyfriend's family is sort of spread out all across the US, but they are all coming together at his parents' house this year. We decided to forgo my family's dinner for his, since I will so rarely have the opportunity to see his extended relations.

I'm sort of psyched about this family dinner because there will be 4 kids there, ranging from ages 3-13, and I feel like family gatherings are really lame without kids to liven things up. When my mom's side of the family gets together, I generally tend to go off and play with the wee ones, because I find it less stressful and more amusing than talking to the adults. Especially adults who I am concerned might disapprove of me. And what's the fastest way to earn family approval? Why, being "good" with the kids, of course! I've got it all figured out...

Boyfriend has two young cousins who I met once, two years ago. We stayed with them for a few days during a christmas-time road trip. At the time, they were 11 and 9, so we had a lot of fun with them. They were super sweet and smart little girls, and their parents were also really fun and nice.

Cute Cousins 1 and 2 will be at this particular family gathering. But something has been nagging at me about seeing them, particularly regarding Cute Cousin 1 (the elder). Apparently, CC1's parents are some sort of hard-core Baptist. And last year, they took her on something called Passport2Purity. It is every bit as ominous as it sounds. Apparently, it's a kit that you buy to help you plan a weekend retreat with your son/daughter during which you explain the importance of abstinence and purity. From what I can see from the website, it emphasizes five main areas: Dating, peer pressure, purity, sexual maturity, the importance of god's word.

Okay, cool. You're a Christian, and you want your kid to not have sex. I get it. That's okay.

But what upsets me is that I can't really find any indication about whether this kit talks about safe sex. Including preventing pregnancy and STDs with methods other than abstinence. Or, if it does include these things, how accurately it discusses them. (I'm picturing a glossing-over that goes along the lines of: "You can use a condom to prevent pregnancy and STDs. But abstinence is THE ONLY WAY THAT IS TOTALLY EFFECTIVE. Also, birth control actually kills babies.")

My parents never gave me the sex talk. I believe I got it in the fifth grade from my sister, after she heard me singing Nine Inch Nails' "I want to fuck you like an animal." And even after that I was way confused for a while. When we got the internet in the eighth grade (remember when the internet was a novelty?) I had to turn to hard-core porn to figure out how the hell a penis could actually fit into a vagina (OH MY GOD IS THAT HOW EVERYONE DOES IT?) For crying out loud, my mom didn't even tell me what a period was. I had to figure it out from a Human Growth and Development class, which left me EVEN MORE CONFUSED (does the blood only come out when you pee?). And I didn't hit menarche until I was 15, so I was confused for an awfully long time. So, I really like the idea of having a talk with your kids about sex and sexual maturity. I think it could have saved me a lot of anxiety.

But here's the thing. There's a lot of things wrong with abstinence programs, mainly that they DON'T WORK (go ahead, Google it. It's old news, but someone just came out with yet another study confirming that they don't work). And as I implied in an earlier post, I feel like I've seen the effects of them first-hand. See, I have a theory that abstinence programs are not only damaging on their own, but that they tend to negate the effects of a comprehensive sex-ed program. In my high school, we had a good sex-ed program. The texts and teachers were honest. We got to anonymously ask whatever questions we wanted. We had sex-ed many years in a row, starting at sixth grade. A few times a year in high school, someone would drop a big box of free condoms in the locker room. But once a year, this lady came in from some religious group, and we were required to sit through this abstinence talk. I understand that this person's presence was an attempt to please the religious zealots in our rural community. But dammit if her talk didn't induce enough fear and shame to prevent us from buying condoms, or seeking birth control.

And guess what? A lot of girls got pregnant in my high school. A LOT.

This woman probably wasn't the sole cause of all those pregnancies. It was probably a combination of people like her and rural, uneducated parents who gave the same talks at home. Or who threatened to kick their kids out if they caught them fucking (stellar parenting).

But that "fear and shame" element is why hearing about this Passport2Purity program is bothering me. The program makes sex into a much bigger deal than it needs to be. It makes it into this big, scary, ominous thing that will either cause disfavor in the eyes of your god, or somehow decrease your value as a person. For chrissake, making the talk into an entire weekend getaway sends a pretty scary message all on its own, doesn't it? This "sex thing" is SO HUGE that we need an entire damn weekend to talk about it?

I'm upset that CC1 (and later, CC2) will have to hear about how shameful and dirty sex is. How it will make them lesser people if they fuck. How do lessons like this help girls who are victims of rape or sexual abuse? How do they help them make smart decisions about purchasing birth control? If CC1 happens to get molested at school, will she tell anyone after all she hears is that "God wants you to wait" and "Your future husband will be so disappointed if you aren't pure." If she hits 16 and decides to have sex, do you think she'll be more or less likely to run to the drugstore for condoms? Or ask her mom to take her to the gyno to get birth control pills?

CC1 is a smart girl. So I hope if those events do occur, she can see through the bullshit and make healthy choices. But my specific problem in this is that I don't think her world is set up to encourage this. Her parents are quite set in this thinking, her church is set, and until a few years ago, she attended a small Christian school. Now she attends public school, but it's in Mississippi. Not a very progressive state, I imagine, in terms of comprehensive sex ed. So I'm torn. I want to say something to her, anything, to help her out. But I know that it's not my place, and I could do real damage if her parents found out that I tried to undermine them. At the very least, I want to tell her that it's not dirty and she's not going to hell for it. I want her to have at least one person who tells her that. It would have been nice if someone I trusted had told me that when I was 13.

Hm. Turns out I'm NOT an Ameican citizen.

Jon Stewart has brought up his qualms with the McCain Campaign's excessive pandering to "small-town" America a few times. I hadn't really noticed it until he mentioned it a few nights ago and again last night (it was the main theme of his show last night). This issue grinds my gears.

Until I was 17, I lived in a small town in rural Pennsylvania. The population in 2000 was 3,512 (smaller than Wasilla!). When I was 16, I worked for a summer picking strawberries on a farm. My high school was surrounded by farmer's fields. My best friend grew up on a farm (and naturally, being best friends with her, so did I). My memories of childhood include playing in woods, barns, creeks, and cornfields (damn it's easy getting lost in that shit). My best friend's father was a truck driver. My own mother worked a series of factory jobs. I have seen cows and goats get castrated (and I have seen it go horribly, horribly wrong). I have taken my father's pick-up truck and ramped it over road-bumps and done donuts in fields (don't tell my dad, for the love of god). I was once asked to go line-dancing for a date (I declined, for the record). The Olive Garden is "fancy." I've shot a gun many times (I took the Boyfriend to the local armory the first time he visited home. The fine fellows at the armory hailed me as the best girlfriend ever).

So yes, I am from "Real America." I am from the "hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America area of this great nation" (Thank you, Ms. Palin. How kind).

But in those 17 years, despite lovely scenery, fond childhood memories, and a healthy knowledge of farming, I have seen things that have deeply disturbed me. I have seen ignorance, racial intolerance, and deep-seated sexism. I have seen abusive parents, neglected children, and low education levels. I've seen teen pregnancies (a LOT of teen pregnancies. I've also seen one barely-a-teen pregnancy). I've seen violence and hatred towards gays, atheists, blacks, and women. And I've seen all of this condoned, if not actively encouraged, by authority figures (be those figures religious leaders, parents, or school personnel).

So I got the hell out of dodge and went to a university in a moderately-sized city (pop over 300,000). There I learned that more people existed than white, small-town people. That those who are not white, straight, christian males of comfortable means face a TON of discrimination that is often subtle and easily-ignored by the majority's eye. I learned to respect other people and their struggles, and I learned to be skeptical of many things and trusting of very, very few.

And then I moved to New York (pop: over 8 million). I learned that Harlem is a very friendly place, and everyone says "hello" to you on the sidewalk (contrary to popular myth, this is not something that happened often in my hometown). I learned that almost everyone holds the door open for everyone else. I found a city where people from VERY different backgrounds co-exist. Where over 170 languages are spoken, and no one tells anyone that "you gotta speak American in America." Where accents might be hard to understand, but everyone makes the damn effort, because how many fucking languages do you speak? Where gays, atheists, blacks, hispanics, women, the transgendered, the poor, and the just-plain-eccentric are not open-season for bigots. Diversity is king, here, and we are happy that way.

I'm not saying that intolerance or discrimination doesn't exist in NY. It exists everywhere, as it is a product of our society and culture. A product partially fed and fattened by people like John McCain, Rush Limbaugh, George W., Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, and the like.

But what I AM saying is that New York (and Chicago, and Boston, and San Francisco, and Dallas...) are REAL parts of America, too. And that we're often much nicer and more pleasant in terms of respecting our fellow human beings. And you can't disenfranchise us by saying that we're not. Many of us, like myself, came from what McCain is calling "real America" (which, by the way, I read as white, uneducated America), and we left because we didn't like that those places had no opportunities for us. We could not grow and thrive there either financially or intellectually, because those places are very limited in the experiences that they offer. We knew that there was more out there, and that the "more" is available where the population is larger and more diverse.

Places like my hometown are "real" America, too. But they aren't to be glorified. They aren't any better than New York. For the people who choose to live there, they offer something more than New York: families, jobs, lower costs of living, a different style of living. But they aren't some special piece of heaven, either. They have nasty sides, and if you've lived in a place like this, you know that the nasty parts are NOT few and far in between. Low levels of education and global awareness are not something to be celebrated. Ignorance isn't something to be celebrated. Associating an entire religion followed by 1-1.8 billion members with "terrorism" isn't something to be celebrated. Automatically associating brown people who have funny names with said religion and terrorism isn't something that's "folksy" or "charming", either.

McCain and Palin are insulting EVERYONE in America when they claim that people from small-towns are "real" and "patriotic" and "love their country the most." I'm real, too, and so is my vote. Patriotic shouldn't mean "unquestioning, die-hard fan of war and the current administration." To love one's country shouldn't mean "I have a yellow ribbon on the back of my truck." Loving one's country means questioning the government, questioning the status quo, and actually giving a shit about EVERYONE who lives here, including non-whites, immigrants, and people with diverse backgrounds. Loving one's country DOESN'T mean only loving the white parts, or the male parts, or the Christian parts, or the 4-person nuclear family parts.

To the people in small-town America: When McCain and Palin tell these things to you, they are diminishing and dismissing the problems that you face. They are ignoring your underfunded schools. They are dismissing the social ills that chill your community. They are underestimating the problems that you face in accessing good jobs and healthcare. They are making you into some sort of magical, mythical being: The strong farmer, the wise factory-worker. They are boxing you in and trying to woo you with vague rhetoric. They are trying to tell you that you love this country the most, so that you will be content and follow them wherever they go. But you have problems, don't you? And you shouldn't be content, should you?

There are 8 million people in New York, 3.8 million in Los Angeles, 3 million in Chicago, 1.2 million in Dallas, and 223,000 in New Orleans. Those people are real. Those votes are real. Attention must be paid.

Halloweenie

When I was something like 7 or 8, my parents called me downstairs where they were watching TV. Because I was a really lovely and special child, instead of going downstairs, I'm sure I angrily called out "WHAT?!?!?!" from my bedroom. "Just come here!" my dad said. There was urgency in his voice. So I traipsed downstairs, all SIGH! And my dad was all "just watch this!"

"Why? What is it?"

"Just watch!"

And this, my bloggie friends, is the fine piece of Americana that my father was so excited to finally share with his youngest daughter:

That's right. The motherfucking Thriller video. And what did I do, after standing in stunned silence for thirteen minutes and 41 seconds? What would any eight year old do?

I screamed and then ran up to my room, where I'm sure I sat on the bed sucking my thumb for an hour and waiting for Michael Jackson and his team of perfectly choreographed zombies to take me away and force me to learn their dance moves. IN HELL.

In retrospect, I guess I was wise to fear Mr. Jackson.

So, enjoy the video. I hope it gets you in the Halloween spirit, because it sure still scares the hell outta me.