Playtime...

When I was in the 5th grade we moved to the south valley in Albuquerque. The lot was 3/4 of an acre and the trailer park was right across the street from the railroad tracks and our lot backed up to an arroyo (ditch for those of you wondering). The south valley in Albuquerque doesn't have the best reputation for safety as well. So railroad tracks, ditch, bad neighborhood and I still spent most of my time outside. Like most kids did back then. Now I could (and have in the past) wax on about how I don't think the world was a safer place back then or a more dangerous one now. I just think we all worry more. With the connectivity we have and the 24 hour news cycle things are reported more that weren't before and we all focus on them. 

So anyway, one of the places I would go was an abandoned house site. My friend Evie and I found it one day while we were out exploring. The house was started but not ever finished. It had been planned to be a cinder-block house and something must have happened because they only got a few blocks high. But the whole house was laid out. You could see how big it would have been, where the rooms would have been, the fireplace, the front door. But then nothing more. Just a blueprint of cinder-block.

Evie and I speculated about that house the whole time we both lived in the neighborhood. Why would they start building and then stop? Being kids running out of money was never something we considered. It was always more dramatic. Someone died. They found a body while they were digging out the foundation. The place was haunted. We would walk the edge of the house, around the whole perimeter on the blocks discussing what went wrong. Or we would play make believe. The house became our house. No matter what we played, or how we played we would only hang out on the lot for awhile before deciding to go someplace else. It just wasn't somewhere to hang out for hours. Just for awhile. 

Someone dumped a Christmas tree on the lot. It still had tinsel all over it. We propped it up in the corner of what we decided was the living room. And we kept the tree up for months until one day we got there to play and it was gone. Which of course led to a whole new round of speculation, where did it go? Who would take a tree? Was it the people who started building the house? Were they going to start again? Was it the ghost? 

Evie moved away after our first year there and I only went and checked on the house a few times after that. Never staying long. Being there alone was a little too creepy. The last time was right before we moved a few years later. Still no movement on building the house. I remember walking the edge of the house like we used to do and then saying goodbye to the house and what ever it was that lived there. Because that's what I had settled on, the land didn't want to be built on. It put up with Evie and I as long as we didn't stay long. That's why after an hour or so of playing we always felt like we should go. The tree was too much like someone living there and that's why it disappeared. 

As I left the lot I didn't look back. I was pretty convinced that I might see something waving goodbye. I remember picking up speed, just a little bit, I didn't want to flat out run, but I also didn't want to stay any longer than I had to.

Every once in awhile I wonder about that house. If it ever got built. What other kids found the space and what they decided had happened.

And of course if the ghost missed Evie and I when we stopped coming around...

When it's not just about the books...

As most of you know I just spent the past two weeks re-reading the Harry Potter series. I had always meant to go back and read 1-7 all in a row but just hadn't gotten around to it. The combination of a Goodreads goal looming and feeling more than a little nostalgic as C leaves for his final year at school made this the time to do it.

When I first started my mother-in-law was in town and we were talking about how long it would take me, I guessed a couple of months. C said no way, it took him a month and I read faster and more than he does. He was right, of course. Part of what I forgot was that once you start a Harry Potter book you sort of resent anything that takes you away from reading it as quickly as possible. And since I am lucky enough to have very few time commitments right now there were days where I was able to read for 6 hours straight.

It's been years since I read the books. Five since the last was released and longer than that for the rest. I used to re-read all of the books in preparation for the latest release but after Book 5 I just didn't have time. So books 5, 6 and 7 all had only been read once. Well twice, but I don't really count it as a solid twice since it was almost concurrent. How do you read a book twice in one sitting? Well you read it and then read it again out loud. That's the way I read all but the first few chapters in books 1-7.

See that's the thing about this series, it's not just a book series to me, it's C's childhood. It's something we share. But from two totally different viewpoints. Even discussing the books yesterday you could see how our life experience changes the way we view the main themes. There is a point in the books, happened the first time and happened again this time, where I really don't like Dumbledore. I forgive him, of course, but there is a stretch when I am truly angry with him. C never reaches that point. Because he experienced the books from the point of view of the hero, I experienced them from the point of view of the hero's mom. I'm all for heroism and saving people, but using a child to accomplish that? Well... But for C it was fine.

Because he grew up with Harry. He was 6 when we started the series and almost 15 when it finished. And he knew at 15 that what Harry was doing at 17 wasn't kid stuff, but it was important and it was only Harry that could do it. And he's not the only one to have grown up with Harry. His generation and those around it all have HP as a touch stone. More so even than mine did with Narnia or Lord of the Rings. It's hard to find someone C's age that hasn't read the books, or seen the movies, or absorbed it all through pop culture. It's as much a part of who they are as anything else they grew up with. And I'm glad I was there to share it with him.

Reading for me growing up was a solitary thing. I'm sure when I was very little I was read to, but I taught myself how to read at an extremely young age (my mother insists it was before I turned 3) and I know that I read to myself from there on out. That is until 6th grade when our teacher started reading to us again. She would read when we would come in from PE to give us time to settle back in to the quiet of class from the activity of PE. It was awesome. I can still remember her voice for Gollum in the Hobbit. Then when I was high school I had a friend whose father still read to her and her sister every night. I thought that was amazing. So I decided even when C could read to himself I would still read to him as long as he wanted me to.

So at 6 he was still getting the bedtime story. But it was getting harder and harder to find good books for that sort of reading. He was also reading on his own and would tear through anything he was interested in before I could claim it for the bedtime story. I had started to hear about the Harry Potter books, there were two out at the time and the third was about to be released. The part that clinched trying it for me was the line, "these are the books you wish you had when you were a kid." Well okay then, let's give it a try.

And I am so glad we did. Because, as I said, they are the touchstone books of his generation, and we got to experience them together. I realized very quickly in to book 1 that I was going to have to read ahead a little. There were a lot of accents to cover and if I knew what was coming and who was speaking I had a better shot of pulling it off. Not to say that there weren't times that Ron and Hermione ended up getting confused, but at 11 boys and and girls sort of sound the same anyway right? Right? Oh well...even at 6 C had the good graces not to point out my mistakes and just enjoy the story. So I read them to him as bedtime stories, and daytime stories, basically anytime we could get some free time I read them to him. And then when we finished he would read them to himself. And we would talk about them. And I loved it.

Then the time between the books became longer and longer. He was almost 11 when book 5 came out. He wasn't getting the nightly story by that time. Would he still want me to read this one to him or would he want to read it himself? Reading it himself would go much faster. But he chose having it read to him. And I loved it. Book 6? Thirteen and no way was he going to want me to...oh really? Oh great! Let's pull up a couch cushion and get to it. The last book. The one that he has been waiting for. The one everyone will be talking about and avoiding spoilers is going to be almost impossible. And he is almost 15...

Excuse me while I cry a little in the corner. Seriously. It is one of my most cherished memories. These were "our" books. And I read them all out loud to him as his first experience with the story. When he has kids of his own and gets to share these books with them he will have the memory of the two of us curled up on the couch reading. Listening to the accents and voices that I pulled out of my head, liking my voice for Dolores Umbridge better than the actress who played her (and knowing how proud that makes me and that I tell EVERYONE that story).

So I love the books. I love the story itself. I am in awe of the pieces that are woven in the early books that come about in the end as important. As someone who only writes short pieces because I have a distinct lack of attention span, this is amazing to me. I love the themes she covered, is it any wonder C's generation doesn't fully trust the media or the government and is all about equality? I love that the books get darker, and deeper and more complex as Harry ages. Part of that perfectness is lost on everyone else now. They can read them all in one shot instead of growing up with the books like C's generation did. Maturing with the story. As we were talking yesterday it's hard to find someone who could really understand book 7 that would be interested in book 1. Or believe you that as basic as the first book is, the last is that complex. But he got to have them all at age appropriate spaces. And for that I'm glad.

I love that we share one of the books as a favorite and our second favorites are different. I love that we agree on some things and disagree on others. I love that he had someone built in at home to share the excitement about this new world who could talk to him endlessly about it. I love that I had the same. I love that he remembers things that I don't, that he got themes that I didn't, that he learned lessons that passed me by. I love that I was able to answer questions he had about the big themes, love, death, sacrifice. And I love that when I told him I still cried when Dumbledore died he said, "Yeah, but we know you are soft" with a sly grin on his face...

Basically I love this series for all that it is and all that we made it in to.

When is a book series more than a book series?  When it's magic.

The more they change...

So another thing that drives me crazy (and you thought we were through with the mashed up part and ready to get to the main story didn't you?) is mandatory sentencing. Set in stone punishment. Zero tolerance policies. I've written before that the greatest disservice we are doing with our kids in school is not teaching them how to think anymore. We don't teach them how to reason, how to figure things out for themselves, how to reach a conclusion. We teach them the right answer. And zero tolerance polices, mandatory sentencing and three strikes you're out all fall right in to this vein. It's standardized testing for adults. You don't have to think about what someone has done or why, you just plug it in the slot and out pops your answer.

And the flip side of this is when you get a child who has been punished under a zero tolerance policy and instead of going to the administration, the powers that be, the people who can actually change the decision; the parents run to the media. That makes me nuts as well. I get it, it was ridiculous that little Johnny was expelled for bringing a water gun to school. He's 6 and 6 year olds do dumb things. The toy should have been confiscated, put in "the drawer" and a note sent home saying we don't allow toys like this or toys at all or whatever at school. But instead of going to the principal and saying, don't you think this is ridiculous and let's work it out and teaching Little Johnny how to resolve something, you went to the media and said, My angel, my darling, my perfection! And taught Little Johnny that breaking the rules was fine if it got you on the news.

A few years ago my conservative batch of friends were up in arms about a group of kids who had been sent home for wearing "patriotic clothing", specifically flag do-rags during a Cinco de Mayo celebration at their school. It was all over my news feed. "How dare they!" "It's disrespectful!" "You can celebrate Mexican stuff but not AMERICAN!" And since this was before my "Don't just don't" phase of commenting I actually waded in to the discussion. Now me being me, I first did a few Google searches to see what the rest of the story was, if it was out there. And of course there was another side.  Seems these upstanding patriots had clashed with the Mexican/American students before. The administration, trying to head off trouble, had specifically asked them to be respectful on this day. And they responded by wearing the do-rags and taking the "America, love it or leave it!" stance by shouting at the kids during their celebration.

So when I pointed out that they were really troublemaker kids hiding behind the flag I was told how awful I was. When I also pointed out that technically it's against flag code to wear the flag as clothing in the first place so they weren't being good citizens I was told I was wrong. Um, no, I'm not. It was my grandmother's biggest pet peeve. Seeing people wear the flag as a t-shirt or the worst in her eyes, a bathing suit. The Flag Code, for those of you who still think I'm wrong. Section 8. (d). And don't even get me started on "patriotic paper plates".  But basically nobody knows that there were/are rules around the flag so they ignore them. And since the good patriot kids defending our country against other cultures fit their narrative they ran with it.

Instead of Johnny and his buddies learning the importance of appropriate time and place and respect for other people they learned that if you drape your ignorance in the flag you will get support. I see bright futures for them in talk radio.

So yes, I blame the schools for being too rigid in their rules. Zero tolerance means zero thought. But I also blame the parents for not taking a hard look at their kids and saying, "Hey, you broke the rules, face the punishment." We are raising a batch of kids who have always gotten a trophy, who have always been told they are wonderful, who know if you break the rules you can spin it in the media and come out the hero and we should all be really worried about what that means for the future. It's a subject I've ranted about before. Maybe a few times. Teach your kids to think, to work and to strive. And stop bitching about the nanny state if your first instinct is to tattle to the media if life treats little Suzi unfairly. You can't have it both ways.

Okay, so back to why all of this sticks with me. I'm a sociopath. Or psychotic. Or mentally disturbed. Or something. Now some of you just laughed, some of you nodded like you have always known (hey!) and some of you are waiting for the rest of the story...

When I was in middle school I did my first tries at writing. And one of the things I wrote was a super disturbing revenge fantasy piece of crap story. Now, I say it was a piece of crap only because I've read some of the other things I wrote around that time so I know it had to be awful. I also had stolen shamelessly been inspired by such brilliant pieces as Flowers in the Attic, Blue Lagoon and The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids. But I can't tell you exactly why it was a piece of crap or post any piece of it because I don't have it anymore. It was taken from me. 

I went to a small  private conservative Southern Baptist school from 5-8th grade. The core group of kids had known each other for years, some since kindergarten. But by 8th grade we were in rebellion. Something about our class, our group just jelled into something they hadn't ever faced before. Open dissent. Looking back I can tell you it was too much change foisted on us after years of no change at all. They hired a teacher for the 7/8 class that shouldn't have been teaching at a religious school, and honestly shouldn't have been teaching young girls at all. Now, don't get me wrong, he never did anything inappropriate, but it didn't take long to figure out we flustered him. And by flustering the teacher you could get a class to descend in chaos pretty quickly. He didn't make it through the year. 

Then they brought back a teacher we had  had before, Mrs. Cyzack. She was our second favorite teacher. How must that have made her feel? To know we loved her but she was our second favorite and we let her know it. The things you think of as an adult. Anyway our favorite teacher Mrs. Penney had moved when her husband was transferred. But we had all had her for 6th grade and had all loved her. The kids who had come after 6th heard stories about her and wished they had had her as a teacher. Two favorite Mrs. Penney stories:

Our PE teacher had a rough year our sixth grade year, I found out later when he and I talked when he wasn't my teacher anymore, anyway, he was having a particularly bad stretch and just couldn't deal with things well. So one of the things he did was get lazy about his teaching. So for PE that meant we ran. For the entire period. Fifty minutes of circles around the playground. We would come back to class just gassed. Good for nothing for a long stretch. Exhausted, thirsty, spent. So one day after a particularly warm run Mrs. Penney looked out at a sea of red faced sixth graders, excused herself,  went across the hall and laid in to Mr. Rex. She had had enough. This was never to happen again. We heard it all. I'm not saying he was scared of her but the next week we "started a new fitness chapter".

The second one was strictly personal. At the end of my 7th grade year when we passed around our autograph books I went back to Mrs. Penney and had her sign. She wrote in part, "I hope one day you start dating boys as smart as you are." This is a teacher that was paying attention. She saw who my boyfriend choices were and did not think they were the best. Instead of sitting me down and lecturing me she gave me that simple note. Now I eventually did just that. Ended up marrying one and had a kid who I realized was much smarter than I am when he was in elementary school! I wish I could tell her, or blame her, or something like that. 

Anyway, that was Mrs. Penney but she was gone. Mr. Otero was gone as well, we had chased him out. Mrs. Cyzack was back, putting our class back together when she had to quit. She had cancer and was too sick to teach anymore. It had been the reason she left in the first place. We hadn't realized that. So we lost her. And we were all devastated. So then they started the parade of teachers to come in and try and push us along. Mrs. Thompson who should have never tried to teach, let alone a group of unruly 7th and 8th graders. And finally the woman whose name I can never remember, Ortega maybe? But she was a giant of a woman. Red hair, mini skirts, too much make up. I swear we all thought she was a man dressed as a woman! And she was mean. Just flat out mean. Discipline for her meant liberal use of the paddle and extra homework assignments. Writing sentences. I will not chew gum in class 500 times by tomorrow.

Ugh.

So I wrote. It was a tiny rebellion. Putting down on paper that story. Basically in the story we all rebelled. We took over the school. We found out Mrs. Penney hadn't been transferred, they had killed her, and I believe poisoned Mrs. Cyzack and that the rest teachers were planning on killing us to make the rest of the school behave and so we struck first. We killed them all, we hid out in the school, we took care of the younger kids, and at some point in the future Larry got Debbie pregnant. I didn't write specifics about any of it, that I can remember, because I had no frame of reference. I know at least the sex part wasn't detailed. What could I have written at that point? That they kissed..WITH TONGUE!  

Anyway, it was a silly little story. But violent. And sexual (in a glossed over sort of way) and hit among my friends. It was passed around from person to person and poured over. It was contraband. We all knew it was "bad" which made it awesome! Then Tanya took it home. And she read it and then gave it to her mother to read. And that was that.

I was livid! How dare you give it to your mother! It wasn't yours to give, it was mine! And how dare she keep it, it's not hers, it's mine! And I was terrified. If her mother called the school I would get called in to the principal's office for sure. I had never been paddled in my years at Parkview but I knew Mrs. Robertson would administer the beating for sure. And what if my parents were called? I was doomed....

But that's not what happened. Tanya's mother told her it was a disgusting piece of trash and I should be ashamed for writing it and we should all be ashamed for reading it, and then she threw it away. I never got the story back.

Now fast forward that to today. To a "typical" situation now. What would have happened?

Tanya's mother would have turned the story over to the school. They would have taken one look at it and realized that I was planning on doing something horrible and called the authorities. I would have been expelled. Arrested. Questioned. Possibly committed. My parents would have gone to the media to say, "It was a story! She's creative! There was nothing real in that! And we are suing for destruction of personal property!"

What had been a silly little revenge fantasy story written strictly for the shock value and kicks of a group of kids who felt powerless in their situation would have been turned in to something much bigger. Something it didn't mean at all. And what would we have learned? Fear? Never to write anything again? That thoughts are the bad things, not deeds, but thoughts?

What did I learn instead? Well, let's see, I learned that not all fiction is for everyone. I learned not to trust Tanya with my things. I learned to back up my writing before letting anyone see it. And I learned that maybe you shouldn't write revenge fantasies using real names.

And I learned that when I read a story about some disturbed kid that I need to look to see how disturbed really. Is it they built a bomb or brought a loaded gun to school disturbed or they wrote something down that they would never do but they wrote it down anyway disturbed? Are they the next Kip Kinkel or the next Stephen King? Because there is a difference. And we need to be able to see that. 

To think.

To reason.

But I'm still a little bent she threw my story away. 

The more things change...

This is probably going to be a bit of a mash up blog. I know there is a story I want to tell about my childhood, and there are a few notes I want to hit about "these kids today", or I guess more importantly "these parents today" so it's going to get a bit wandery at times. Like that's never happened before...

On Saturday I was talking to a friend (who also is my hairstylist) about growing up and how different things are now. How when we were kids we had a ton more freedom. I walked myself to and from school from first-fourth grade for instance. And it wasn't a short around the corner walk, it was a we lived right on the edge of the bus boundary walk. But both of my parents worked and my brother and sister were in school or at work themselves by the time I needed to leave for school so I walked myself. And I walked home. Key on a piece of yarn tied around my neck. And I wasn't the only one. We were the latch key generation after all. And she said the thing that most people my age say, "It's a wonder we made it out alive."

Thinking back on the things I did as a kid, I rode my bike or was out on my roller skates for hours. No exaggeration, hours and hours. No cell phone, not within earshot, sometimes without an adult even having a clue I was out. They weren't home, how would they know? I lived in the South Valley for part of that time and anyone growing up in Albuquerque would tell you that nobody should wander the South Valley alone. But I did. And my friends did. And we got in to scrapes, and played with things we shouldn't have, and saw things we probably shouldn't have, and had what was a normal childhood at the time. Totally normal.

Contrast that with C and when he was 11 or so he would walk the neighbor's dog.  He and Candy would take off, with my cell phone in his pocket, with strict rules on where he could go and when he should be back. The boundary increased as he got older and more experienced.  Or I should say as I calmed down and realized it was fine. But he had a pretty wide range within our "no busy streets" border. He also started walking the mile down to Bethany for lunch or a snack at around 12. He had money of his own and he chose to spend it that way. When there was a Godfather's in the square he would head down there a few times during the summer for lunch. One of the women that worked there was impressed with two things, one how polite he was and two that we let him go on his own. Now I was/am(?) an overprotective parent. I will admit that. I screened his movies, his video games, his computer files; kept tabs on how he was doing in school and what issues he might be having academically or socially. The whole bit. But not letting a 12 year old walk to the local shopping area? That was a step too far for even me.

But it wasn't normal. I know of high school age kids that aren't allowed out on their own. Not because the parents are afraid of the teenage behavior trouble they will get in to but because the parents are afraid they might be abducted. Snatched right off the street! A parent's big fear. What if? But the reality is that the what if rarely happens. It happens. And I wish it never happened, but most childhood abductions aren't by strangers, they are by the non-custodial parent. And since both Brent and I were under the complete agreement that we made him together so we both had to take care of him together we weren't worried about that. I will also say reading the book The Culture of Fear when he was 8 or 9 helped as well. It's the first time I started to really pay attention to the cycle of news stories. It's not that there are more instances of child abductions now than when we were kids it's that they report on them more. And they tend to like to report in groups. Oh no! Look what happened! And then we all panic and keep our kids locked up and they never learn important things like how to leave a proper tip.

Okay, next bit. So remember when we were growing up and words actually meant something? Like bullying. If a kid was a bully or a kid was bullied we all knew pretty much what that meant. Systematic and continual punishment. Usually the bully was stronger (either physically or socially) than the kid being picked on. I say usually but I mean always. That was the point of calling it bullying. The strong picking on the weak. But now? Well now bully means someone was mean to you. It's not the same. And people who try to retrofit their childhood into the "I was bullied" model make me shake my head. I've mentioned before a guy I knew during my high school years who I saw posting on a forum about how he was bullied as a teen. He wasn't bullied, he was an asshole. People were mean to him because he was a jerk. Now maybe he would say he was a jerk because people were mean to him, but now we are talking chicken and egg. When I met him he was a jerk to me from the start. So I was a bitch to him right back.

I did go to school with a guy I would say was bullied. We were all mean to him. On an almost daily basis someone was mean to him. Not all of us at once, but all of us at one time or another. It was middle school and he got hit by the puberty bus hard. He was taller than all of us, greasier, ganglier, more awkward. And we never let him forget it. He called me out on it one time after school. We were almost the last ones there, as was normal and we were talking about something (don't remember) and he said, "Why are you only nice to me when no one else is around? You ignore me otherwise. It's not nice." And being sweet and kind I thought about it and saw the error of my ways and changed. Okay, I totally didn't. I told him "Why don't you act normal when everyone else is around? You act like a big dork so no wonder I ignore you." Ouch. But it did stick with me. And I did have to think about it. And I know I at least had the good graces to be embarrassed that he called me out.

Years later I became friends with a woman who had been his little sister's best friend. We went to the same very small private school. I had no idea who she was, she was younger than me so was just "one of the little kids" but she knew who I was because I was "one of the big kids" and she knew me because she knew this boy. And she ADORED him. Because he was kind to his little sister. Because he was kind to her. Because he was always nice. Because, because, because... Now at this point I was older and closer to sweet and kind and I felt awful for how we had all treated this poor boy. Especially looking at it from the point of view of a little sister who had adored her geeky, awkward, older brother. I asked my friend if they were still in contact and if they were would she pass along a message from me to him. They weren't. So I missed my chance to apologize for the pre-teen me.

So I will cop to bullying when bullying was done. But if you try and tell me you were bullied because someone was mean to you? Not systematically repeatedly mean, but one time? Or because you didn't get along with someone who you were mean to and they were mean to you right back? Sorry, not bullying.  And parents I am looking at you right now, you have to let kids figure this stuff out and learn how to get along. If there is real and true bullying going on then yes, someone needs to step in and explain why it's not okay, what is wrong with the behavior, how it must feel, all of that. And if it's dangerous, physical bullying then yes, step in. But if it's two kids who don't like each other? Stay out of it. Let them work it out. It is a valuable life skill to have. Either learning how to deal with people who don't like you, or learning how to solve conflict so you can like each other.  Either way if we keep stepping in and "fixing" things we are going to end up with generations of broken adults.

So now this leads to the story I had set out to tell about the difference between today and back then. But I've gone long so I will write that tomorrow.

No I didn't just bully you.  I teased you.  There is a difference.