Parents of my generation (baby boomers) are discovering that transitioning our children into adult life is challenging. Whereas most of us were looking forward to the freedom and responsibilities of adulthood (many of us were chomping at the bit), it seems that these days it is just the opposite. It seems like if some of our offspring could have their way, they would never leave home. They would forever be the ward of Mom and Dad.
For a long time I thought the information I was getting was merely anecdotal, but now I am of the opinion that I am witnessing a general trend. I am talking of more than graduating and finding out that there are no jobs and so, by default, you move back home. I mean that our offspring that cannot seem to handle the real world. They can handle what is familiar, which inhabiting their bedroom and tuning out reality with their computer and high speed internet.
Those on the right will probably say we boomers have coddled our children too much. We taught them to be helpless, they will say. There is some truth to this. However, our children live in a much different society than the one we were born into. For one thing, our population has close to doubled. For another, our children have largely grown up with both parents working. Mom was probably much less a presence in their lives than in ours. With both parents working, connection time that used to occur daily around the dinner table is not happening as frequently. As a result, our children have learned a certain helplessness, because there whereabouts were always known, their time always carefully scheduled, and their opportunities for unstructured play very limited. They lived a managed life, which may be a new paradigm.
I doubt that many children today inhabit the sort of neighborhoods I did, where stay at home moms were the rule, where kids had a snack provided by Mom coming home from school, did their homework and were then unceremoniously dumped into the streets to play and not be seen nor heard until dinner time. No one on my block worried that we were getting in trouble or of a creepy child molester in the neighborhood. That was because we generally knew our neighbors. Today, most of our neighbors are strangers. If we are lucky, we know some of their first names.
My generation raised our kids in a way that made sense with the times we lived in. Since most of us were unable to have a stay at home parent, we worked through day care and after school care issues instead. Since crime was more problematic compared to our youths, we preferred our children engage in school related or organized group activities, or have their play dates indoors in our house or at a trusted friend’s house. Since we had less time to interact with them, we tended to skip the complexity of a family meal and let them forage the kitchen. If we wanted a family meal, it was more likely to come in the form of processed food from McDonalds or Wendy’s.
In short, childrearing used to be relatively simple. My parents raised eight of us, and my mother told me she never worried that much about us, nor obsessed over our grades or our choice of friends. She figured we would mostly pick it up through experience. We picked things up mostly by watching our siblings. Parental attention did increase when we became teenagers, and this led to inevitable feelings of rebellion. We lusted for independence and freedom the way a wino craves a bottle of Boone’s Farm. Of course, we wanted a part time job, so we could afford wheels. (The idea of a parent buying their teen a car was then virtually unheard of.) Anything that got us out from Mom and Dad’s shackles was a good thing. Maybe we would end up sharing an apartment or a house with a bunch of other young adults but we would be free.
When I survey my own extended family, I see a much different story. I have a niece age 29 and a nephew age 25, both still living at home. Both have issues with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) that is complicating their lives and spawning other psychological issues. Both have bachelor’s degrees but no jobs, nor have much in the way of prospects for acquiring one. Much of this is due to the economy, which is harsh in general but is especially harsh for young adults. However, it seems that there is more than that. It appears that the complexity of modern life is too much for them to handle in general right now. Fortunately, they do have their parents who have not abandoned them and make sure they are getting the medical attention they need, for which they pay out of pocket. Their old bedroom is still there too and that’s where they still spend much of their lives.
I have another niece who seemed more traditional. She was chomping at the bit to get away from her parents and in the process made a number of arguably wrong turns. She ended up with a boyfriend and against her parents’ wishes, shared an apartment with him. Later she dumped her boyfriend for a less shady boyfriend who impregnated her. The last I heard, they were not planning to get married. Mom and Dad covered her maternity costs, and heavily subsidize their lifestyle as well as dote on their grandchild. She found out that Mom and Dad weren’t so bad after all, since arguably she made some major mistakes in her life and they are helping her to cover them. For now, she is back sucking their on their financial teats. Fully independent living seems in her distant future as well.
I have other nieces and nephews still working their way through college so perhaps their prognoses will be better. One attempted college, dropped out when he found it involved real work and then joined his father’s business. For a while, things looked good working for his father. He bought a house by himself, but financed it with a sub-prime mortgage. Then, unsurprisingly, when the economy tanked he lost the house. He still works for his father. It is unclear whether he could find employment otherwise.
There are other stories I can relate from friends I know that are similar, but I will not. What I am seeing is a lost generation of young adults, with real adulthood delayed and for many receding out of reach. They have plenty of company in other nations. Marketplace Money, for example, chronicled the high unemployment rate of youth in Spain, which is around forty percent. It’s a lot lower here in the United States, but still plenty high. Moreover, as the economy tightens, those with jobs feel less inclined to retire; it’s too risky. This has the effect of making entry-level jobs harder to acquire. So they wait and feel disenfranchised and marginalized while hoping things will change. I suspect they spend much of their time feeling lost, hopeless and scared.
Some of their problems are situational but some are also related to diet. As a generation, they are prematurely fatter than ours was at their age, and eating a proportionately larger share of unhealthy food and more calories. If you believe as I do that you are what you eat, their diet may both be literally and figuratively weighing them down. Based on my classroom teaching experience, they are less curious and engaged in life compared to my generation.
I don’t know what all this means yet, but I am certain it is not good. It is one of the many reasons the United States is slipping as a first world power. A more enlightened society would find a way to harness the power of our youth and young adults so, like the Civilian Conservation Corps in the Great Depression, they perform meaningful and hopeful work. Instead, except for the parents who continue to shelter them as young adults and a handful of programs like Americorps, it appears that we just don’t give a crap about them. Many are greatly talented but have no way to earn a living from their talents.
This wound will continue to fester. At some point, it may disenfranchise an entire generation.
July 24th, 2010 at 02:05pm
Posted by
Mark |
Sociology |
one comment
Tags: Young Adults, Youth
Wouldn’t it be nice if our star actors and actresses were as wonderful and as interesting in person as the characters they portray? Some of them doubtless are, but some of them are also like Mel Gibson who, at least when he is drunk or under stress, behaves like an angry and psychotic asshole.
Should you have the stomach to hear for yourself, you can listen to two Mel Gibson cell phone rants with his now ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva. Oksana is also the mother to their daughter Lucia, born in October 2009. In the calls, a distressed, raving and hyperventilating Mel Gibson is very upset with Oksana for many alleged transgressions, for which he repeatedly calls her a “bitch” and terms much, much worse than that. Her many egregious sins apparently include falling asleep in bed with him before first giving him a blowjob and not making the bed in the morning.
Presumably, Oksana taped these calls as evidence in future custody proceedings. I am not entirely sure that surreptitiously recording these calls is legal, but they certainly are a window into Mel’s soul. I assume that Mel had been drinking when he made these calls. Heaven help the man if he was not. Mel’s propensity toward inebriation has gotten him in trouble before, most famously in 2006 when he was arrested for driving under the influence, and subsequently made anti-Semitic remarks to the arresting officers. After that arrest, Gibson reputedly underwent therapy for alcohol addiction. These phone calls suggest the therapy did not take.
Aside from being a depressant, alcohol is also known for reducing inhibitions and they are in full display in these phone calls. Thank goodness Mel and Oksana were at least separated in physical space. If someone went off like this with me in the same room, I would be rushing for the exit. People like Mel make an excellent rationale for owning a firearm, which statistics show is most likely to be used in a homicide to kill an intimate. If I were Oksana and had been in the same room with him when he said these things, I would be reaching for the gun because Mel sounded angry enough to use one himself. I might even have used preventively.
Love, alcohol, family history and bad genetics can make us behave like beasts. However, Mel behaved worse than a beast. Most members of the animal kingdom are not naturally angry or cruel. They kill primarily to survive. They will rarely lose control, even when their lives are in danger. Losing control when your life is in danger is an excellent way to die.
Just for the record, Mel, words like c*nt, bitch and whore simply mean that you believe that some women are not quite human. By labeling a woman this way, you are essentially saying that they are subhuman, so they might as well be slaughtered and turned into Solyent Green. Just to utter these words to a woman, but really anyone, says that you believe they should be stripped of their humanity, integrity and personhood. They should not be uttered at all, no matter how much you personally dislike someone. Now it is okay, though not polite to call someone an asshole, as I called you, when they have clearly earned the title. With your reckless and unrestrained actions toward a woman, you clearly demonstrated that you are an asshole. You also are mentally ill and need more help.
You are not, however, a prick, which, like c*nt, would suggest you are nothing more than your sex organ, although from these phone calls it would be hard not to make the inference. We know you are not a prick because can see the better Mel in your movies. Perhaps you have turned to directing movies in part to exert control over some sphere of your life since it is lacking in others.
It sounds like much of your anger was due to other life events. It sounds like you are financially overextended and you were taking it out on Oksana. So sorry you had to give up your L.A. Lakers box. I really doubt, as you allege, that Oksana cost you five million dollars. However, even if she did, it was your decision to allow her to spend the money. You two are not even married!
It sounds like you are getting therapy. You need more. A lot more. It may be time to change therapists because it doesn’t look like your therapy has been very effective. Certainly there are women out there who are gold diggers and as thoughtless and emotionally abusive. In fact, I have known a few. Maybe I got lucky, but none of them said or implied that I was worthless. In that sense, they bested you.
You crossed a line, but what your raving remarks truly reveal is not that Oksana is worthless, but that some part of you believes that you too are worthless. You are not. You have been emotionally abusive (which research suggests you learned from your family) and show every likelihood of being so in the future, unless you can change. So please, find a better therapist. Heal yourself, man. Perhaps someday, you will understand that certain words and certain tones of voice do not just scratch, they maim, sometimes for life. The most likely one to be maimed though is not the victim, who may have some feelings of self worth and integrity, but the perpetrator who is already maimed and is now more so.
I am wishing you a speedy healing.
July 16th, 2010 at 07:37pm
Posted by
Mark |
Sociology |
no comments
Tags: Abuse, Celebrities, Mel Gibson, Oksana Grigorieva
I am probably like most people. I do not like being proselytized to. I realize that it is a free country, which means that anyone can proselytize to anyone else. Since I react to it like someone with a peanut allergy to a nearby peanut butter sandwich, I have incorporated techniques to minimize proselytizers in my life.
For example, I almost never answer a knock on my door anymore. If I feel motivated enough, I may actually look through the little hole in my door to see whom it is. If I don’t know who they are, the door stays shut. Only once did I need to hear from some stranger knocking on my door. He let me know I left my car’s lights on. Otherwise, it has been a steady stream of people wanting to sell me stuff. Sometimes it is relatively benign, like a Girl Scout out selling cookies. Often it is someone working on some campaign. However, about twenty percent of the time, someone wants to sell me salvation.
One key way to recognize proselytizers is that they are usually dressed up. They often work in pairs as well. Jehovah’s Witnesses are particularly easy to spot because they wear dark pants, a white shirt, a dark tie and are often also on bicycles. They are clean, short haired (if a man) and well groomed, sort of like Mr. Rogers, but without the cardigan sweater. They are also usually carrying copies of The Watchtower. Mormons also tend to dress when knocking on doors. One thing is for sure: no one on my block knocks on doors dressed fancy, unless they are coming to your house for an upscale party. Dressing up in my neighborhood is like wearing a sign that says, “I am a proselytizer.” Maybe jeans and a T-shirt would be a more effective way of getting that foot in the door.
Some years back, I expressed my opinion that leaving “Are you saved?” pamphlets and related literature on car windshields was also an incredibly ineffective way to get converts. I would be amazed if one in a thousand of these little pamphlets actually brought someone into a church. Maybe spending all that money to grab one or two souls is worth it to some. To me, this approach seems a giant waste of time, money and newsprint.
Some of the devout are beginning to understand that their well-meaning tactics work poorly at best and counterproductively at worst. One of them is Jim Henderson, chronicled last year in an episode of This American Life. Henderson seems to acknowledge that traditional tactics for saving souls no longer work very well. He is taking something of a secular approach toward proselytizing. This has involved inviting atheists and people of other faiths to come to church and see what turns them on and off. He is also making friends with the unsaved without the expectation of converting them to anything. Henderson and his group take a long-term approach. After all, today it is almost impossible to find people who have not heard of Christianity or Jesus. Many of them have already have chosen faiths, or are comfortable with their lack of faith. Their prospects are often as plugged into the media and Internet as they are. They know what you believe and can anticipate your sales pitch. Apparently, salvation doesn’t mean as much to them as it does to you.
Henderson’s non-proselytizing proselytism may be the wave of the future, although the ultimate outcome may be different than he expects. While the hazy goal may be new saved souls, what is really happening is real dialog between believer and non-believer wherein the unsaved become a peer, not a candidate for salvation. In the past, proselytism succeeded in part because it was forced on the heathen. For example, Spaniards colonizing the New World had no problem slaughtering any native on the spot who was not enlightened enough to accept their faith. I guess they figured they were otherwise doomed to hell. Such tactics no longer are allowed. People, or at least the grown adults among us, choose their faith freely. Since ringing doorbells and missionary work is less effective these days, there seems to be little choice but neutral but meaningful engagement. Today, proselytizers have to live with and behave like the natives to win their respect. Through friendship, which usually cannot be faked, they have a chance of converting them. The problem with this approach is that by living with the natives, it becomes difficult not to empathize with them. You may find yourself losing your faith rather than winning any converts.
People who do embrace a faith outside of their own were probably inclined toward the faith all along, and needed a catalyst to set things into action. I turned out to be an accidental proselytizer. I am a Unitarian Universalist, and as a people with our own peculiar faith, we abhor proselytism. When my friend Renee and I started to work on social action projects, we used my Unitarian church to stage a number of community events. She attended another non-denominational but inclusive church not too far removed from Unitarian Universalism. Over time, she went there less but acquired more exposure to my church. My church turned out to be familiar territory because (and I did not know this at the time) she was raised a Unitarian Universalist. It turned out I facilitated her return to a faith where she had always felt closely aligned. I suspect she became estranged from it when her parents divorced.
I think that most proselytizing fails because people are generally comfortable with their current faith or lack thereof. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” is their motto. However, during periods of great crisis, if the right person enters someone’s life, their emotional vulnerability might persuade them to make great personal leaps. This is why there are no Salvation Army churches, unless you count their local canteens. If you are a hopelessly drunk, drug addicted, or are in the midst of other wrenching personal problems, you are probably relatively friendless as well. A relative stranger might be able to offer a path toward recovery by embracing their faith.
What they are embracing though is not likely to be Jesus or the Bible, which may come later. What they will embrace instead is a caring and inclusive community of people who at least appear to care about them. Whether Jesus is or is not a path to salvation will probably matter much less to them than whether they can call you a friend, and whether your friends embrace them as well. The need to feel loved is universal. What feels meaningful is a human-to-human, not the wisdom in the Sermon on the Mount, or the promise of some hazy afterlife where they will be blissfully happy for eternity.
In short, the wise proselytizer will not proselytize at all, but will simply love generously and with an open heart. You will not have to read the Bible to them to convince them. It is likely to happen very slowly if it happens at all. However, with sincerity and perseverance, one day they may feel exceptionally close to you in their heart. Then, unprompted, they may ask to know more about your faith, or ask you to take them to a service, or simply show up for a Sunday service at your church.
Their decision will likely be based on how they feel about you as a person and your integrity, not on your faith or holy book. The faith you seek to give them will likely be an independent discovery that will occur many months or years after they start attending your church.
June 24th, 2010 at 06:39pm
Posted by
Mark |
Sociology |
no comments
Tags: Faith, Proselytizing, Religion
Perhaps there is a good reason why Muslims get so upset with depictions of the prophet Muhammad. Of course, devout Muslims, or at least the Sunni sect, generally consider any depiction of their prophet to be blasphemous. Perhaps Muslims were far thinking. Because if they had an idolatrous statue of Muhammad, it too might have suffered the recent fate of a 62-foot “Touchdown Jesus” statue, which was destroyed by lightning on Monday in Monroe, Ohio. It just would both blasphemous and horrific if a 62-foot statue of Muhammad suffered the same fate.
"Touchdown Jesus" in better days
The quirky statue was a landmark in front of the Solid Rock Church of Monroe, Ohio. It both puzzled and entertained residents and travelers on nearby I-75, but no longer. Only a steel frame now remains. Flames created by lightning striking the statue consumed the structure on Monday. Perhaps parishioners can take comfort in that it was never quite a proper statue, as it depicted Jesus only from the torso up. This Jesus appeared to be a giant, because he overshadows his own crucifix. I guess resurrection of the body can do that to a savior.
God must be pissed because according to that secular rag, The Washington Post, there have been a host of burning Jesus statues in recent years. The city of Golden, Colorado, which I visited twice last week, has a 33-foot Jesus statue. Lightning blew off one of Jesus’ arms back in 2007. Perhaps the largest well-known statue of Jesus, the 133-foot Christ the Redeemer statue that overlooks Rio de Janeiro, suffered the indignity of having Jesus’ eyebrows and fingers singed in a lightning strike in 2008.
You would think that Christians everywhere might be reading something into these events. Jesus must have really been sending a message when actor James Caviezel, who portrayed him in the 2003 film, The Passion of the Christ, was actually struck by lightning while making the film. Most likely devout Christians read his survival as Jesus letting us know that he approved of the Mel Gibson version of his life, because he let Caviezel live. Or perhaps Caviezel was technically dead for a short while, then brought back to life by Almighty God. Wouldn’t this be a miracle in itself? Praise the Lord!
As for burning Jesuses, the co-pastor of Solid Rock Church, Darlene Bishop, is glad Jesus took the hit instead of a nearby women’s shelter. So in a way Jesus does save, or at least may have saved the lives of abused women living in and around Monroe, Ohio. However, we do know that lightning tends to find the most direct conductive path between cloud and ground, and this tends to be the highest metallic structure, which was likely the Touchdown Jesus. While the statue’s steel infrastructure kept it strong, it also made it vulnerable to lightning strikes. So perhaps its destruction by lightning was preordained.
Or perhaps this event could have been avoided had the statue been constructed using sounder engineering principles. For example, the statue could have had a convenient lightning rods protruding from Jesus’ outstretched arms. I guess that would have been unaesthetic. Still, given the $300,000 cost of the statue and the $400,000 cost of the amphitheater, both which were destroyed, a couple nearby lightning rods would have been a sound investment. One hates to think how much tithing may now decrease at the Solid Rock Church with its main recruiting tool just an ugly frame of steel.
All these burning Jesuses could be signs of the Apocalypse. I am starting to think maybe the Apocalypse is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, since many of those thinking the end is near are often the same folks who also do not believe in global warming. If the Apocalypse is just around the corner, then what’s the point? Drive those Hummers! Flick those cigarette butts out the window as well. You might let some Jesus statues burn as well.
For those looking for them, signs of the Apocalypse are now easy to find. We have what appears to be the worst manmade natural disaster unfolding in all its oil-stained glory in the Gulf of Mexico. We have a Negro as our president. We have Greece, where democracy first flourished, quickly devolving into poverty and near anarchy in a debt-induced death spiral. Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have formed a joint government in the United Kingdom. Arctic sea ice is receding to levels never recorded in our history books.
So I started thumbing through my Bible. 2 Timothy 3 gives signs so that we will know the end of times:
“Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, self-assuming, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up [with pride], lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power.”
This sounds like a few Tea Partiers I know, including Rand Paul. Maybe I should be scared. Maybe God is trying to tell us something, and burning Jesuses as well as all those periodic sightings of weeping Madonnas are just confirmation.
I will be watching warily to see which next statue of Jesus draws God’s wrath. Just between you, me and that good Mormon Glenn Beck, I don’t think that owning gold is going to get me admitted into heaven. Time for me to repent, perhaps for the sin of thinking our world is a rational place. It probably would be, except for all us humans.
June 16th, 2010 at 07:29pm
Posted by
Mark |
Politics 2010, Sociology |
no comments
Tags: Apocalypse, Christianity, Glenn Beck, Statues, Touchdown Jesus
And that myth would be: “In America, you can raise yourself from rags to riches.”
The myth did not begin with Horatio Alger, Jr. but he did a lot to spread it. The 19th century American author wrote dozens of rags to riches books that proved financially rewarding for Alger. However, Alger himself was not a rags to riches story. He was the son of a Unitarian minister. He was home schooled for his first ten years and eventually was sent to the Gates Academy and thence to Harvard University. He had a brief career following in his father’s footsteps. For about two years, he was a pastor at a Unitarian assembly on Cape Cod, and then abruptly resigned. Many years later, it was revealed that he molested two teenage boys in his congregation, the circumstances of which were hushed up at the time. Perhaps a tendency toward pedophilia drew him to New York City and into the world of young and often homeless boys who sold newspapers and shined shoes. In real life, none of these boys that we know about made their way from rags to riches. Even in Alger’s stories, the boys typically succeed because are usually befriended by a kinder, older and moneyed man who sees potential and a good heart in the boy. In short, even in fiction, these boys succeed because of the largess of a benefactor.
Yet it is curious how many Americans truly believe in this myth. Republicans in particular seem to swallow it hook, line and sinker. Perhaps the closest place the myth comes to being actualized is in Hollywood. Many a famous actor can recount stories of bussing tables or working retail while they waited for that big break. Yet, few of these actors grew up in a ghetto or were the product of migrant laborers. Most came from normal middle class households and were often supported by their families. They often achieved some small measure of regional fame before going to Hollywood. In any event they had some talent: usually looks and acting ability and some good fortune, usually one or more inside contacts that helped launch their career. Not many casting directors are actually looking for talent behind the counters of Hollywood Starbucks.
What happens to most people happened to my wife. She was a product of a single-family household in Flint, Michigan in the 1960s and 1970s. They could kindly be called lower middle class. In fact, they lived just above and sometimes below the poverty line. Almost every year they moved from one rental house to the next. However, she was smart. Her mind was and still is a sponge and picks up everything that goes into it. This plus the mediocrity of Flint public schools allowed her to easily get As without studying. She won a scholarship to Perdue University. There within a year or so she flunked out. The other students turned out to be way smarter than she was and had acquired study habits that she lacked. They also had this amazing support network called Mom and Dad, as well as various close friends and mentors they had acquired over the years. For the most part, they graduated from Perdue. She did not.
Not surprisingly, when sociologists measure the factors that are likely to mean you attain success (as in a good paying career and a relatively high standard of living) it helps if you come from a family where your parents also have good paying careers. Because they earn more money than their peers, they tend to live in pricier neighborhoods. Moreover, because they make more money than most, they spend more time petitioning their school boards to make sure the schools are top notch. They place their children in communities where their kids will be around people like them, with similar expectations in life. Moreover, their parents invest in their children. They put away money for their college education. They get their teeth fixed. They shepherd them to ballet and little league games. They attend their plays, pay for their tutors and guide them through the college admissions process.
Whereas if you grow up like my wife, your father is a distant memory of your early childhood, you are a latchkey kid, your mother almost never attends a school performance unless it is in the evening and because she tends to work late your diet tends to consist of a lot of greasy fast food. Yet, in many ways my wife was fortunate. She was fortunate to be born white. At the time there were decent paying blue collar jobs in Michigan, although her mother didn’t qualify for them. With the help of a government subsidy, her mother was able to buy into a local Levittown and for half a dozen years or so had a fixed address in a decent neighborhood.
If you are born Black or Hispanic then chances are your road to prosperity, if it happens at all, will be a much steeper climb. Because you are more likely living in poorer neighborhoods, your schools are more likely to be worse and your neighborhoods harsher. You likely have gangs, drugs and juvenile delinquency to deal with. You are almost guaranteed to be living in a single parent household. There is a good chance that your mother (who almost always gets custody because the father mysteriously disappears) will be trying to survive on two or three constantly changing dead end jobs, which means you will grow up not seeing much of her. The odds of you picking yourself up by your own bootstraps and living that richer and larger life are almost non-existent. They are unless you want to be a thug and perhaps through many acts of violence control the local drug market. You can also hope for unlikely fame shooting hoops or carrying a football.
In short, success in America, like is true anywhere else, depends primarily on how and where you entered this world, and the degree of caring and support you get from family, friends and community. It may also depend, in part, on how tall you are, your body mass index and how beautiful you are. Your race also predicts your success. While no one is guaranteed to be a success, the odds increase dramatically in your favor if you have some or all of the above.
By the way, my wife is now an American success story. Her success is due, in part, to marrying me, because I was a product of a middle class family that was nurturing and valued education. In the 1990s, her employer funded her tuition to night school. Over six years, she earned her bachelor’s degree that allowed her to move from secretary to I.T. support person. Even so, since she was cruelly downsized in the early 2000s, much of her present standard of living is thanks to my salary. When she managed to find work she found it suddenly paid about half what she used to make. My family certainly encouraged her to persevere, and I took up the parenting duties while she attended classes and studied during her nights and weekends. Which proves my point: no one lifts themselves up by their own bootstraps. It takes a certain amount of talent, a lot of perseverance, enormous amounts of good education, connections, a ton of money and especially a caring and supportive community to succeed.
If we truly want Americans to prosper, we need to foster this is the sort of caring and nurturing environment for all Americans.
June 6th, 2010 at 10:56am
Posted by
Mark |
Sociology |
no comments
Tags: Horatio Alger, Opportunity, Poverty, Upward Mobility
So Al and Tipper Gore are heading for separate residences. Forty years of a storybook marriage appear to be over. Many of us who have followed the Gores all these years are just shocked by this turn of events. If marriages are to break up, most will break up within the first seven years. It makes no sense for a couple to break up after forty years of marriage, particularly a publicly affectionate couple like the Gores who in 2003 wrote the book Joined at the Heart about the changing American family. Who would have thunk their marriage would now be disjoined at the heart?
Gosh darn it Al and Tipper, even if you were having marital problems, you were supposed to keep them in the closet and carry on. America needed to believe that both of you were committed to each other for life and that your marital bond was unbreakable. While a lifelong, happy marriage is apparently not possible for most of us, at least yours would be. With your separation, you have gone all human like the rest of us.
The good news is that according to the couple no infidelity was involved. At least that is what we are hearing now. Who knows what news reports we may read about in the next few weeks or months? How long before Al has some younger piece of arm candy, and the rumors start to fly? Rest assured if there were any dirt on their marriage, it would come out soon. For the moment, their marital breakup suddenly out shadows the doings of Sarah Palin and her extended family.
Still, if one were looking for signs of marital stress in Al and Tipper’s marriage, there were some tealeaves to read. For one, after Al Gore lost his presidential bid and took up the environment as his new passion, he was suddenly gone from home a lot. He was jetting here, jetting there, jetting anywhere and not coming home much. Could much of that time away from home, most of it apparently without Tipper, been his way of coping with a bad marital situation? A physical separation even if it was not a legal separation? Then there was his sudden weight gain. For most of his life, Al had been at normal weight, and suddenly he got all Warren Harding on us. Maybe he got so myopic about saving the planet that he forgot about eating healthy and exercise. On the other hand, since he spent so much time in airports maybe he had no choice but to dine on their greasy junk. Or perhaps there was a lot of marital stress at home and he compensated by overeating. Fortunately, he managed to take off most of the weight. However, a sudden and large weight gain in anyone is usually a sign that someone is under unusual stress. I know in my case I tended to weigh the most when I felt under the most stress. There were no such clues from Tipper, but then again we were not paying attention to her, as she prefers to spend most of her life offstage.
What went wrong? I frankly hope we don’t find out, but I suspect we will at some point. There must be enough cash some publisher will throw at them for one of them to write a tell-all book. I hope that neither succumbs. For the moment, close friends express bafflement. Whatever marital woes beset their relationship, they kept them far from public view.
What the Gore separation represents then has more to do with spoiling our illusions than the end of their long-standing marriage. With blood relations, you have little choice but to hang in there for life. I am fortunate to love and respect my siblings as well as my father (my mother died in 2005), but even in families where there is a lot of hurt feelings and rivalries, rarely will relations separate for life by choice.
Despite all the sober words at the start of a marriage, marriages are ultimately optional relationships. It is true that for much of human history marriages were for truly for life. This did not necessarily make them happier, but they did endure. Today, if you cannot work it out, you divorce and move on. If, as I suspect, your next relationship means you are largely revisiting the same issues you had in your marriage, then perhaps divorce is pointless. Any divorce is a gamble that your future you will be happier than you were in your marriage.
I also strongly suspect that marriages are not naturally meant to endure for life. Some do, and some percent of those that do are perhaps overall generally healthy and happy marriages. Marriages lasting forty or more years, like the Gores, are a fairly recent phenomenon. The primary purpose of marriage these days is to provide a stable and healthy environment to raise a family. Until recently, you often did not get a chance to see your grandchildren. Those that did were lucky to have their spouse alive after twenty or twenty five years. If, as it appears, the Gores had thirty-five years or so of a happy and healthy marriage, then they were probably extremely fortunate. Most of us will not be so fortunate.
I hate to characterize my own marriage for public consumption, but I suspect it is typical of most marriages nearly a quarter century in length. My wife and I love each other, but like all marriages, ours too has its issues. Neither of us is anxious to head for the exit, but neither are we the enchanted young adults that we were when we married in 1985. We do grate on each other, some days more than other, but apparently not to the extent that we want to live lives apart from one another. In any event, neither of us particularly embraces change, which helps keep us as a “still married” statistic. At the same time, neither of us are naïve enough to think that divorce could not happen to us. All marriages are consensual. For most of us old married people, success in marriage is about succeeding in scaling back expectations of what marriage should be.
So rather than get too upset about the Gores breaking up, why not raise a glass to what appears to be a really good and long run? It appears they had thirty-five years or so of a really good marriage. Most of us would be thrilled to have ten years of excellent marriage, let alone thirty-five. Divorce is not always a bad thing. It can also be liberating. It may be that at this stage in their lives it is the best thing for both Al and Tipper. If so, I’ll raise my glass for both of them having the good sense and the courage to move on.
June 3rd, 2010 at 07:20pm
Posted by
Mark |
Sociology |
no comments
Tags: Al Gore, Marriage, Tipper Gore
My blog seems to be on something of a health kick lately. This is because over the last year I have been dealing with more than my usual number of health issues. It’s not just me. This week, my mother in law complained of chest pains. Doctors found a blockage near her heart and put in an emergency stint. She then suffered a heart attack that was followed a day later by another and worse heart attack. She was technically dead for ten minutes until they finally managed to restart her heart. She is still in intensive care and is delusional, a condition I saw my own mother go through since she also suffered from congestive heart failure. Her long-term prospects look dubious, but she is about eighty years old. She is fortunate to be alive in any condition, because she made lifetime habits of smoking and not exercising. My wife plans to fly out to Phoenix tomorrow to be with her mother. Her return date is unknown. If all this close-to-home health news were not enough, one of my sisters called me today to tell me that she has been diagnosed with the onset of adult diabetes.
So feeling my mortality, I am focused on healthy living, as are many other people including First Lady Michele Obama. Obama is busy planting a vegetable garden on the White House lawn, demonstrating healthy eating and fitness, and working to end childhood obesity. This is long overdue but of course, this being America, there is fierce resistance. The processed food industry is all up in arm about taxing nutritionally empty foods like soda that give us sugar highs and put us prematurely into the hospital. I heard one C-SPAN caller the other morning (a self professed Tea Party member) dreadfully upset that “big government” was trying to regulate sodium in our food and was thinking about raising taxes on nutritionally empty foods like sugared sodas. To me these are “better late than never” proposals, but it makes other American hopping mad. I wonder if they also object to nutritional information on packaged food. Apparently, it is more important to be nutritionally ignorant and cause millions to die prematurely and deal with wholly preventable diseases than it is to increase the size of government. You have to wonder if the nutritionally empty crap these people are likely eating is affecting their judgment.
I avoid “reality” TV shows but about a year ago, while stuck in a hotel room, I watched an entire episode of The Biggest Losers, which now has many international spinoffs. As with most of these “reality” shows, it seems to be much more about fostering unhealthy relationships between fellow contestants than losing weight. The more weight your team loses, the “better” you are doing. The grand prize of $250,000 would certainly be nice to win, but at what price? In any event, in addition to the constant sniping you can watch contestants downing protein shakes, dehydrating themselves, working with personal trainers and engaging in the vigorous cardiovascular exercise they ignored most of their lives.
If you are obese, losing weight is usually vital for your long-term health. If you are overweight, it is also a good idea. Still, losing twenty, 40, 80 and in some cases more than 100 pounds is not by itself healthy. First, if the calories you are ingesting are not nutritious, you are not being good to your body. Second, as I discovered, dehydration can result in syncopes (fainting spells), falls, concussions and even death. No wonder Biggest Loser contestants in case they should they end up in the hospital or drop dead sign forms disclaiming NBC from all responsibility. Perhaps the most likely thing that will happen when you lose weight is that soon after the cameras are tracking your progress, you will quickly rebound, putting back the weight you gained and often more, such as happened to actress Kirstie Alley. Arguably, if you were just going to gain it back, you might have been better off not dieting in the first place.
Granted I only watched one episode, but what I saw on The Biggest Losers appalled me. Not only does the extreme competition glorify sniping at fellow team members (hardly the sort of harmonious living the Dalai Lama would encourage) but extremely rapid dieting almost guarantees that you will gain back the weight. A real competition for The Biggest Losers would not emphasize how much weight contestants lost per week, but track the contestants on how long they maintained a healthy weight, ate sensibly and followed a moderate exercise regime. The show should reward those who took off lots of weight in a sensible manner: by taking off a pound a week. They should reward those who have also successfully kept the weight off. This, of course, would make for very uninteresting television, but seeing how others did it would be very instructive to the sixty percent of us either overweight or obese.
How do people manage to lose and keep the weight off? My last post is perhaps instructive, but my method is but one of many. Methods that work will be tailored to the personality of the person and work with their eating and exercise preferences. Like alcoholism, I see obesity as a lifelong disease. I will forever be at risk of being overweight and obese. It is only through incorporating effective eating and exercise strategies into my life in a natural way that I will succeed in my real goal: being at a normal weight and remaining at a normal weight. Of course, I want all this, plus I want to be fit, to have a healthy heart, get optimal nutrition and never have to worry about high blood pressure or high cholesterol. I want to pass away gently in my sleep sometime in my nineties. I’ve kind of figured out this means I won’t be eating many French fries or getting double cones at Baskin Robbins.
In sum up, The Biggest Losers contestants are almost predestined to be tomorrow’s biggest gainers, an inconvenient fact that the producers will not bother to highlight. What we need is much more clinical research into the best techniques for losing and maintaining a healthy weight. In addition, we need research on staying optimally healthy while spending our working days in office buildings typing on keyboards.
I would like to see billboards highlighting people who have taken off significant amounts of weight and have successfully maintained a healthy weight for five, ten or more years. These billboards should come with URLs to websites so people can learn more about how they did it. Like Miss America contestants, these real Biggest Losers should tour American classrooms and give public lectures spreading their gospel. Maybe this way, along with reducing sodium, calorie and fat content in our foods and restaurants and encouraging fitness both at home and work, Americans will revert to being fit and healthy again.
I would not waste your time looking for useful tips on how you can weather our obesity crisis by watching The Biggest Losers. Instead, you might want to make an appointment with your physician.
May 15th, 2010 at 05:43pm
Posted by
Mark |
Life 2010, Sociology |
no comments
Tags: Exercise, Nutrition, The Biggest Losers, Weight Loss
They say you are as young as you feel, but if you just hit the big 4-0, most people would agree that you have entered middle age. By my count, I am about halfway through middle age, which broadly ends around retirement age (age 65). I thought when I entered middle age that I had a good idea of what was coming. I had a few things right, but mostly I learned that I was wrong. So I thought it might be useful to set some expectations for new classes of middle agers about this time of your life.
- Midlife crises. Contrary to what you might think, not everyone in middle age has a midlife crisis. Sometimes it amounts to midlife discomfort rather than a crisis. Do not expect that when your midlife “crisis” hits that you will divorce your spouse, find a new job and wholly reorder your life. Because of some internal unsettled feeling of angst, you may do all these things or none of them but doing one or two is not atypical. Don’t fret about your coming crisis. It may be wasted energy.
- Gaining weight. Most middle-aged people gain weight. You may have noticed this already if you compare your weight now to your weight at, say, 25. There is some evidence that this weight gain may be in part due to your metabolism changing. However, it is most likely due to the fact that your live a more sedentary lifestyle while your diet has not changed. There are no silver bullets here, I am afraid. You must either embrace your new and larger self or go through a likely painful process of eating less and exercising more. It is likely that you will yo-yo between gaining and losing weight unless you do something even more painful: permanently change your eating habits. I’m afraid the odds are against you but you may find that some inner angst will make you try anyhow. Good luck. Eating, not smoking or drugs, is your (and my) generation’s biggest health problem. Let’s hope the National Institutes of Health are working hard to find our silver bullet.
- Sex drive. The good news for women is that if they were having trouble finding their sex drive in their 20s they are likely to find it in full flower, at least until they hit menopause. The bad news is that their husbands may not be able to keep up. Ladies, there may be times when you want to be a “cougar” just to get the sexual satisfaction you want. Meanwhile men, who were used to excruciatingly high levels of testosterone, are likely to find their sex drive ebbing. This may lead to one or more periods of impotence followed by the sudden desire to see your doctor for a prescription for an erectile dysfunction drug. The good news about drugs like Viagra is they can help you sustain an erection. The bad news is that they cannot make or keep you horny. So your sex life is probably going to change to be less frequent, which is Nature’s uncomfortable way of telling you that you are aging. If you want to maintain a healthy sex life, you will need to develop excellent communications skills with your partner. This is because you are likely to find that the relationship part of sex, which hitherto you have paid little attention to, is the only way that sex will happen at all. You may find yourself anxious for moonlit walks with your significant other, relationship time and longer foreplay. However, your wife has finally gotten used to not having these things, and may not crave them anymore. You may have to accept the idea that sex will take longer, you may not always succeed and you may not be rock hard through the whole experience.
- Doctors. You really, really want to be insured in midlife, because you will be seeing plenty of doctors. If you do not see plenty of doctors, it is because you cannot afford to do so, which means you will need to either see a lot more doctors later on, you are going to be quite miserable or there is a good likelihood you will die prematurely. It will likely start out gradually but you will probably find you must succumb nonetheless. That’s because your body is getting tired. It’s been working non-stop for forty plus years. Age and gravity are taking their toll and those bad eating habits you acquired as a teen are catching up with you as well. In addition, you are unlikely to have excellent posture or spend most of your day on your feet. This will contribute to common middle age problems like lower back pain. If they haven’t started yet, men will find themselves up two or more times a night to empty their bladder as their prostate begins to puff out. You will probably not make it to 50 without experiencing one weird condition that you would never guess in a million years that you would have to worry about. Attempts to be as physically active as you were as a teen will impart costly lessons. Basketball probably won’t work because it will make your knees hurt or buckle. Volleyball may cause broken tendons. Even if you hit the Gold’s Gym every day and press weights, you will never have the same potential physical strength you had when you were young. The progression will be downhill and the best you can do is slow it. Sorry. Treat your body with care. Get regular checkups, including blood work, and keep up with your vitamins and nutritional supplements. Your body is literally irreplaceable.
- Children. Any children you may have spawned or fostered are likely entering their teenage years. You will probably expect your teens to either be model teenagers or, failing that, at least not do stupid stuff like you did. While you will always love your children, you may find yourself liking them less. In fact, there may be times when you just loathe them. This is completely normal. You are going through a phase too. Eventually they are forced to deal with adult responsibilities and the phase will pass. All that teenage angst will affect your marital relationship, and may contribute to the sex and midlife crises issues. (See above.)
- Age regression. You may also find yourself envious of your teen because they have freedoms that you used to have before you became a sober member of society. Women may want to become cougars and guys will find themselves attracted to younger women. It’s probably not their freedom that you envy. It is their youth because you are realizing the hard truth that the aging clock only goes forward, not backward, you were young and healthy then, and now you look middle age like Sheriff Taylor or June Cleaver. These feelings are natural but look; don’t touch. Only a very usual teenager or young adult is going to be attracted to someone twice his or her age, and if they are it probably will be for your wallet, not your looks or stellar personalities. Moreover, if they happen, it is likely to be ephemeral.
- Groundhog Day Syndrome. The years will zoom by and the older you are the faster they will go. Moreover, you will feel a lot like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. You will feel like you have been down this path many times before. You may marvel at going through two or three sets of appliances while living in the same house. The past will seem crowded together and dates like 1990, 2000 and 2010 will all sort of run together. It will be hard to remember exactly what you did or accomplished in any year. You may wonder how you made it to age 40 at all. Why is this happening? It’s because you are and have been awfully…
- Busy. Unless you have the misfortune to deal with long periods of unemployment and/or have no children, you no doubt have discovered that you are really, really busy almost all the time. You may wonder how anyone has the time to watch TV, let alone blog and surf the Internet. I started this blog in 2002 at the age of 45. It wasn’t until that age that my life became ordered enough where I could take up such a time consuming hobby. When I did of course, I still found it challenging to find the time to blog. To do it, other things were reduced, principally sleep. At age 53, this is still true. The good news is I finally have more time to do things I like, rather than things I must do, but even on a good week it’s about 90% work or sleep, and 10% play.
There is much more to this topic that I will digress on in future posts… if I can find the time.
May 6th, 2010 at 08:03pm
Posted by
Mark |
Sociology |
no comments
Tags: Aging, Middle Age
Having lived more than fifty years, you would think I would have been summoned for jury duty at least several times. Somehow, I never was. I had an inkling it was coming when in March I received an official piece of mail from the Clerk of the Circuit Court asking about my availability for jury duty. About three weeks later, the actual summons arrived requiring me to call or go online after 5 p.m. on April 13th to see if I was needed for jury duty on April 14th. I was not, however, in Fairfax County, Virginia potential jurors have a two-week summons, where you normally report only one day a week. A week later, I went back online to find out that I actually had to report at the courthouse this time.
I wonder how many jurors are like me: honestly interested in being a juror. It’s not that I wanted to stand in judgment of others or help mete out sentences. (In Virginia, juries decide the actual sentence.) It had more to do with seeing so many depictions of a courtroom on TV and never having had to be in a courtroom. This, no doubt, was due to my extremely clean lifestyle.
I was anticipating the experience to be somewhat underwhelming, but surprisingly it was not. One thing I did learn quickly is that while many jurors are summoned, not that many are seated on an actual jury. Both prosecutor and defense attorney look aggressively for reasons to excuse jurors.
After spending close to two hours reading newspapers and magazines with about a hundred other potential jurors in a large jury waiting room, my group of about two dozen was finally escorted to Court 4J. Clearly, my tax dollars had been well spent with this new courthouse. It was about as fancy as they get, and all the courtrooms looked shiny and new. Because I happened to be in the first dozen in the group, I was seated in the actual jury box while the rest sat where the public sits.
The case involved a young man who had been pulled over by Fairfax County detectives. He was alleged to be distributing marijuana because two dope bags were found. Moreover, a drug scale was also found between the passenger and driver’s seat. Possession of marijuana with intent to distribute is a felony in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The defendant was looking nervous, despite dressing in a dark suit and tie. Both the prosecuting and defense attorneys were dressed for success.
During the voir dire, all sorts of jurors were excused. One could not commit if the trial took a second day because she wasn’t sure she could find a babysitter, as her child was too young for daycare. Others openly expressed biases that precluded them from sitting on the case. Two potential jurors approached the bench to discuss their confidential circumstances with the judge and were excused. We were all asked if we had any opinions regarding drugs and marijuana that would disqualify us from rendering a fair verdict. It just so happened that I personally favor marijuana decriminalization. However, I saw no point in speaking up because I knew I would not let my opinion keep me from rendering a fair verdict. My opinion has always been that the law is the law, and no matter how stupid it may be sometimes, we are all required to abide by it. A number of other jurors were excused for no obvious reasons. Maybe they looked biased. For some reason I remained and other potential jurors quickly filled their spots.
I was anticipating the casework and presentation to be a bit sloppy, but I quickly grew to respect both the prosecutor and the defense attorney, both women. If I ever need a good defense attorney, I now know whom to ask for. The defense attorney was particularly insistent. Did we understand that the defendant was presumed innocent? Did we understand that the prosecutor had to prove these particular charges beyond a reasonable doubt in order to convict the defendant of this felony charge?
Enter the prosecution witnesses: three Fairfax County police detectives who in early October 2009 apparently were shadowing this man as he left a Bally’s Gym off the Shirley Highway. Left unstated, but reading between the lines, was that the defendant knew he was being shadowed as he pulled into a parking lot, turned around and started heading back toward the Capital Beltway. He even dodged onto an off ramp then illegally dodged back into traffic. All the detectives testified they smelled unburned marijuana when approaching the vehicle. All detectives also noticed that as he was pulled over he leaned toward the passenger side. They noticed some part of the plastic bags sticking out of the glove compartment, opened the glove compartment, assessed it was marijuana and arrested the suspect. The scale was found later in a search of the car.
While the case looked straightforward, it was not. The defense attorney in her opening statement said there would be testimony from the family that the defendant’s younger brother had purchased the marijuana in D.C. Moreover, the defendant did not own the car; it belonged to his father. He also carried over $1000 in his wallet. There were lots of circumstantial evidence but no one could testify they actually saw the defendant put anything into the glove compartment. If he did seal the bags, it was done in a hurry, and the bags that were presented looked well sealed. The defendant had no drug paraphernalia on him, yet the detectives said there was a strong odor of marijuana when they approached the car.
We shuffled off to lunch with strict instructions not to discuss the case. It was an odd lunch because the defendant and his family were sitting two tables away and the three detectives were three tables away watching him. By two p.m., we were back in our jury room, waiting to be summoned back into court. We waited. And waited. Conversation became more difficult as we were running out of things to talk about. Nevertheless, we could read the tealeaves.
It became official around 2:30 when we finally got back into the courtroom. The defendant had pled guilty to a lesser charge. We were not told what he had pleaded guilty to, but simple possession of marijuana seemed likely. While I had not yet heard the defense witnesses, copping a plea seemed an obvious act for the defendant. In my mind, the prosecution had not proven intent to distribute marijuana beyond a reasonable doubt. Reading between the lines, this defendant seemed to have been tracked by detectives before and probably had other encounters with the law that we were not told about. I would not have been surprised if the defendant had actually been some low level distributor, but the evidence was just not there to convict beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet he probably felt he might have gotten a hung jury and some other jury might convict him. There was probably enough evidence to convict him of possession of marijuana if that had been the charge. Intent to distribute was a stretch given the evidence.
We were thanked for our service and I was back in my office by 3:30. I know I won’t be summoned for at least three years by this circuit court. Most likely, this was my one and only chance to be a juror and yet I judged nothing, just listened impartially. However, the judge did thank us. A jury trial often leads to these last minute plea deals. The trial becomes the wedge that can move a case toward settlement.
My guess is that if summoned for jury duty your odds are at best one in three that you will actually decide a case. Off the bat, you have close to fifty percent odds that you will be excused for one reason or another. Our case was likely not atypical in that in the middle of it, prosecution and defense decided to agree to settle for lesser charges.
Still, it was an interesting day. Our judicial system does work and it was all handled with great professionalism. While courts and juries make their share of mistakes, it works quite well. I left feeling grateful for our judicial system and feeling confident that if I were brought up on criminal or civil charges, I too would get a fair trial.
April 23rd, 2010 at 02:50pm
Posted by
Mark |
Sociology |
no comments
Tags: Courts, Juries, Jury Duty
So I am having lunch with my new friend Valerie at a local Red, Hot and Blue. We are enjoying the food and enjoying getting to know each other a little better. Our relationship so far has consisted of my patiently building a website for her business. We started to trade brief synopses of our lives. As two white Anglo Saxons as well as Unitarian Universalists, we discovered that we had a fair amount in common. We are both married and with children, although in her case there is also a grandchild. I’m still involved in a long process getting my twenty year old daughter out the door.
Val, a seeming model of decorum, at least confessed to having let her hair down a few times growing up. In the early 70s, like many of her classmates, she had smoked some weed and did other naughty things. I went back and frantically examined my childhood, and adolescence looking for similar naughty things I had done. I couldn’t turn up anything other that would qualify as more than a minor venial sin.
It’s not that I am without sin, because like most sinners I have done my share of it, but I could rarely find anything egregious to confess to the priest. There were times I was forced to go to confession when I made sins up. What priest would believe me if I said I hadn’t sinned since my last confession? I was blessed/cursed with two freakishly sober and responsible parents. They didn’t smoke. They didn’t drink, except perhaps a sip of wine at a wedding or at communion. Neither had ever been drunk, although my mother had brothers who were drunks. That is in part why she married a teetotaler. Moreover, I had little in the way of older siblings willing to be bad examples. I had one older brother who developed a taste for European beers and for a brief time smoked cigars in college. That changed of course when he met his wife and reverted to a more natural clean and sober style. He did so with such a zeal that he made my father look like a sinner. Vice was just not part of our upbringing. The neighbors did not help either. They did most of their sinning indoors, rather than in the streets.
When my turn came to grow up, I too stayed unnaturally unsoiled. To this day, I have never put a cigarette to my mouth, lit or unlit. I do drink alcohol, but only a few times a year, occasionally to the point where I feel slightly lightheaded, but never to the point of public drunkenness. I occasionally smelled pot in the hallways at school and saw students take furtive tokes. Yet, I never felt the desire to join them; in fact, I felt something like disgust watching their behavior. While I never embraced puritanical behavior, even in the days before AIDS I felt little desire to jump into bed with any woman on the first date, no matter how attractive she was. It was not like I saw any virtue in chastity. It helped I suppose that I inherited my parents’ natural shyness, so I was not particularly inclined to make the first move.
So here I was this afternoon, age fifty plus, in many ways unsullied by vice, being clean and sober (not to mention proper) with my new friend Val enjoying a meal at a Red, Hot and Blue and wondering whether I had missed something. It is likely I will never know. I did suggest to Val that perhaps it was not too late and she should take me to a bar or tavern and get me stinking drunk and silly. Perhaps once in my life I should get in a bar fight, or puke out my guts into a filthy restroom toilet, or engage in some weird indiscretion I would later regret.
I am not sure I could. Because the downside of all that righteous living and sobriety is you are afraid to take many chances. Most people who gamble lose and often lose big. Sometimes they win big, and revel in their momentary wealth. In any event, whether they win, lose or both, they seem to be living a broader life than the one I lead. Instead, I live a risk-averse life, usually moving toward an area that I perceive to be safer. Six years ago, this need for safety caused me to switch jobs from one in downtown D.C. to a much safer location a few miles from home in the Northern Virginia suburbs. With my window looking down on the National Mall (where I daily watched freight laden trains running in and out of the city), it did not take much for my imagination to conjure up a vision of some terrorist stuffing a boxcar with explosives, and taking me out, much like Timothy McVeigh took out over a hundred people in Oklahoma City in the mid 1990s. Better to find another job.
“Be prepared,” is the Boy Scout motto. That was also my father’s motto (an ex Boy Scout himself). It seems to have worked well for my father, who is in remarkable health at age 83. Yet, is there any point to making it to 83 if you spend much of your life simply trying to optimize your survival and comfort, rather than grasping life by its reigns? Is it better to have a shorter life lived well than a long live lived in a pedestrian fashion? How many others have an earthquake and sewer backup rider on their home insurance policy and umbrella insurance just in case someone wants to file a lawsuit against them?
Since alcohol no longer agrees with my wife, I am hoping my new friend Val will finally be the one to corrupt me. I have no idea where the local bars are, but I suspect she can find out. Perhaps she could introduce me to a drink that is both tasty and likely to have me quickly lying on the floor. Perhaps under the influence I could let my mouth get the better of me by trading political opinions with the Republican by my elbow. Perhaps I would wake up in the morning hung over, hurting and regretful, but knowing for some small period, I had walked outside the bounds of my self-imposed safety zone.
I hope Val will hurry up. I’m not getting any younger and I don’t seem to be able to do it by myself.
April 13th, 2010 at 05:26pm
Posted by
Mark |
Best of Occam's Razor, Life 2010, Sociology |
2 comments
Tags: Sobriety
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