Taylor Lautner’s Boiling Hot Chest and other Conversations of Adolescence
My daughter is a December baby. But with the craziness of the December holiday season, we have made a tradition of pushing back the birthday party in recent years until January.
In comparison to last year’s Bat Mitzvah extravaganza party, this year’s birthday celebration was quite low-key: T-shirt decorating, Pizza & other munchies, cookie cake and – watching Eclipse.
I think I found my cure for the winter blues and the remedy is inviting over 11 girls aged 13 -14 and add pizza and Shirley Temples for extra joy. How can anyone be down amidst the constant chatter and giggling? I was happy that my daughter let me be around her friends, who showered my daughter with hugs and presents accompanied by cards that were no shorter than novellas. The cards, written in every conceivable color of Sharpie, were filled with private jokes and all the ways my daughter is a good friend. Those cards I know will be treasured just as much as the gifts.
Then, it was time for cake and movies. This was a very important agenda with a limited timeframe. With all the girls refusing to leave until they saw every second of Eclipse, a vote needed to be taken as to when to eat cake.
Who wanted to eat cake now?
Who wanted to take a short intermission in the movie to eat cake?
Eating cake while watching Eclipse on the family room couch was not an option.
My daughter piped in: “Hey, how about: we watch the movie,and the first time Taylor Lautner takes his shirt off, we eat cake!”
Friends: “No, then we will want to watch the whole thing.”
So, cake came out, candles were lit, a wish was made. Within 10 minutes, the cookie cake was completely snarfed down. Then, all lights went out. It was time for Eclipse.
Again, I was so glad my daughter let me watch this movie with her friends. The comments made were even more entertaining than the movie itself.
As overheard in the darkness:
“I can really learn how to kiss by watching this movie!”
“He’s sooooooo cute!”
“No. He’s sooooo cute!”
“Even as a wolf, he is cute!”
“The wolves look so fuzzy and cuddly!”
“Bella, you need to wind up with Edward, because then Jacob will be mine!”
And on and on and lots of giggles and screams to go right along with it.
Then, at some point of the movie (and I couldn’t hear a word of dialogue because of all the giggles and nonstop chatter), Bella and Edward are on a mountain. Bella is in a coat and wearing a hat. Then, Jacob shows up – shirtless – and a pair of shorts.
So, being the Jewish mother, I ask, “So why is Bella all bundled up and Jacob is walking around without his shirt for a change?” Because, I had fallen behind (no, I had become sick of) reading Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series and didn’t understand the complexities of man/wolf biology.
The replies were instantaneous:
“Because Jacob is a werewolf and his blood is warm!”
“His blood is hot, his blood is boiling hot!”
“His chest is so hot.”
“His chest is so hot you can bake cookies on it!”
“If someone baked cookies on Taylor Lautner’s chest, I would certainly eat them!”
Oh. Well, now it is all completely logical to me.
A woman I know from a playgroup from many years back asked me the other day if I missed the days when my kids were really little.
And I thought: No, I don’t miss the diaper bags, the diapers, the stroller shlepping. I do miss picking up little people and swinging them around, but teaching preschool cures my fix for that. No, I love the ages my kids are in right now and I wouldn’t change a thing.
So, girls, when are you coming over next?
Hey…… vs. the Love Letter
The first day into December break, my 14-year-old daughter sat at the breakfast table in a blue funk. I asked her what was troubling her.
“No one is around, I’ve tried to get in touch with everyone I know and no one is calling or texting me back to hang out or talk or do anything!” I empathized with her angst. Hanging out just with the members of the family, all friendless and all, can be such a chore.
So, I asked her who she left messages with, who she called asking to make plans.
Her reply was, “Well, I didn’t exactly ask if anyone wanted to get together. I just texted ‘Hey’ to a bunch of people. No one has replied.”
Obviously, in the texting generation, “hey” seems to carry more weight and meaning than its three letters imply. It might simply mean “hello!” Or it might mean
“what are you doing?”
“do you want to get together?”
or, maybe, even
“I really like you.”
That is a lot to figure out for this upcoming generation of few words.
WordPress recently asked, as part of its daily blogging suggestions,
“Would you rather talk or text?”
For me, I’d rather talk. Or better yet, I would choose to write.
I do understand that texting can be convenient, such as when held up in a meeting and you need to get a succinct message out, like, “I’ll be late for dinner or daycare pickup.”
But, I would still prefer to hear the lilt, happiness or sadness in the voice of a friend or a loved one to better understand where they are coming from. Nothing beats a phone conversation when you want to get to the bottom of things quickly.
Sometimes, though, it’s the anticipation of that special letter that makes communication all the more sweeter. This week is National Letter Writing Week. That’s right. The kind of communication that requires a stamp. And ink from something called a pen.
When was the last time you received a love letter? When did you last wait days for that all-important message? Without that longing, songs like “Hey Mr. Postman” would never have been written.
If mere phone conversations and emails are dying away to curt, cryptic texts, then our culture may have seen our last generation of love letter writers.
I’m glad that technology did not arrive in time to deprive me of my letters. They are in a shoebox decorated with wrapping paper. Eighteen months worth of letters that document hopes and longings of my husband and I when we were just starting out. He was in California, I was in New York. He was in grad school, I was in an entry-level job I hated. Each of these handwritten letters — some short, some long — took days to cross the continent and we waited with anticipation for them to arrive in our mailboxes. And, by slowing down to write things out, we said things that we could never say to each other in a long distance phone conversation. Some of the dreams we put on paper, things we wouldn’t dare say when we were long distance dating, are a testament to our life today, our life with the three kids and the house. The house that holds a shoebox of old love letters.
In the digital age of bits and bytes, where will today’s young lovers store their earliest expressions of affection?
Remembering John – and James
Today marks the 30th anniversary of John Lennon’s death.
That day also ended my childhood and woke me up to the harsh realities of the world, realities that couldn’t be imagined away.
On December 8, 1980, I was in the 7th grade. I can’t remember when I started listening to the Beatles. My cousins were into them, and one of them won the Rubber Soul album (yes, not a CD, or a mp3 download, but a vinyl LP) from 101 CBS FM. When playing cards or games at his grandmother’s apartment in Coney Island, if you made a move against him, he would break into lyrics from the song You Can’t Do That – “I told you before — nooooo, you can’t to that!”
So I was well familiar with the Beatles by age 12, though maybe not who the individual Beatles were, or what John Lennon was all about.
I had just received my first radio alarm clock and my radio was tuned to an AM station 77 ABC – with Don Imus in the morning. Don Imus spoofed everything and was always reporting fake news. So when I woke up on that dark December morning and heard that John Lennon was rushed to the hospital for a gunshot wound to the chest, I thought he might be joking. Sure, Imus, I thought, as I went downstairs to get my breakfast.
Then I went down to the kitchen and saw the news on TV – the pictures of Yoko Ono on her knees by the Emergency Room entrance and the announcement that John Lennon was dead.
That day also brings me thoughts of a classmate from the 7th grade. His name was James. I had a bit of a crush on James, though back then, in the brutality of junior high school, liking the wrong boy could get you teased to no end.
James was not exactly what other girls in the class thought of as cool or cute. He didn’t dress cool or act cool. He had thick unruly hair and thick glasses.
But what James had going for him in my book was that he was SMART. Ahead-of-his-time smart.
For a seventh grader, he was certainly up on his politics. After all, what other seventh grader could write poetry that included references to Mohammed Ali as Cassius Clay or Ted Kennedy and the Chappaquiddick incident? What other seventh grader could argue with our social studies in defense of Richard Nixon when most of us barely knew what Watergate was at age 12? James made Nixon impersonations all the time. And he drew great political cartoons. His other idols: Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather of CBS News, a network where he swore he would someday be gainfully employed.
If James was born 20 years too late and had a fascination with the 60’s, his favorite band was of course – the Beatles. So on the morning of December 9, when the world found out that John Lennon was dead, there was an announcement in home room to observe a moment of silence for the slain musician.
At that moment, James did another mature thing that could have a seventh-grade boy drawn and quartered. He cried. Right at his desk, right there in front of everyone.
Now, remember I had a crush on James, who didn’t seem to care that I existed. Who made fun of me about as much as anyone else in the seventh grade. But I couldn’t bear to see him cry. So, seeing that he had no tissue, I got up out of my chair (which I think was against home room rules), crossed the room, put my hand on his shoulder, and offered him one.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
He looked at me, took my tissue, and thanked me.
It truly was a Wonder Years moment that still remains an entry in my adolescent diary.
And now, 30 years later? I still miss John Lennon and wonder what more music he could have given us, what more he could have taught his son.
Now: my own kids love the Beatles. They sing and listen to their music. They have been to Strawberry Fields and have stood outside the Dakota.
Now: For a fifth grade biography project, Nathan, who is now 12, found a book in the young adult section of the library that ironically was published three months before Lennon’s death. To accompany the book report, we made a milk-jug headed John Lennon puppet, complete with the signature round framed glasses, long wavy hair and a New York T-Shirt. Nathan’s playing the guitar now, and I’m sure It Won’t Be Long until he will be asking for a Beatles song book.
And James? Last time I saw James – in person – was at an SAT prep class held at Wagner College back when we were in High School. The class was held at the student union, and one day, a Beatles cover band was playing in the cafe. James had a great time singing along.
I have seen James since, but on TV: James is a news correspondent: though on FOX, not CBS.
I melted my kid’s Halloween Candy
Even when it is melted and refrozen, chocolate still tastes good!
Anyone who thinks that they are up for the Most Evil Mom of the Year Award, they can just go home now.
I melted one of my children’s Halloween candy, the candy they trick-or-treated for in one of the coldest, wettest, and snowiest Halloweens in recent Rochester memory.
Yes, an adjustment one must make when you are Transplantednorth is to allow for the possibility that it may snow for Halloween.
My brave son made not one, not two, but three trick-or-treating runs this Halloween to collect the mother lode of chocolate, lollipops and other chewy, sticky treats. The numb toes and frozen fingers were completely worth it.
And then, I had to go melt it all.
It is partially his fault. If I didn’t hear him sneak candy at 6:15 a.m., if I didn’t hear the thudthud of the cabinets in the kitchen, if he would have had the discipline of self-control and not found every hiding place I ever imagined over the last 10 years of post-Halloween parenting, the candy would have gone unliquified.
And how do I know my kids sneak candy from their Halloween stash early in the morning? The incriminating Kit-Kat wrappers left between the sofa cushions and NOT buried deep in the garbage can give them away every time. If you are going to sneak candy, do it right.
Perhaps it is in my upbringing that I feel compelled to hide the Halloween candy. After all, I am the daughter of a dental hygeienist. Before the day when all Halloween treats must be pre-wrapped and store-bought, my family made bag after bag of buttered popcorn to give for Halloween, because mom thought this would be a more nutritious, less sugary treat for All Hallow’s Eve.
My brother and I eagerly headed out the door for the real stuff.
And after trick-or-treating, my brother and I, like any kids, dumped all the candy all over the first available indoor floor surface to assess the booty. After we gleefully eyed our treasure, mom would swoop in, eliminating anything that might stick to our teeth and cause tooth decay.
Sugar Daddies? We could keep a few. Taffy and caramels? Out of the question, they were removed from our collection and immediately discarded.
The rest of the candy was hidden at an undisclosed time after we went to bed. As hard as my brother and I tried to find the stash, my mom devised a hiding place system that was more complex than that of Sadaam Hussein’s during the invasion of Iraq.
At my mom’s office, children visiting the dentist during month of October would be lectured in my mom’s dental chair about the evils of sticky sweets that cause plaque, cavities and tooth decay.
But upstairs, in the staff lounge, far away from the X-ray machines and the drill and the spit sink, it was like Sodom and Gomorrah meets Candyland. All rules preached downstairs were broken, and there were bowls of candy everywhere!
So, in a desperate attempt to hide the candy and protect my son’s mouth, soon to be fitted with braces, from all that sugar, I found a new hiding place: The warming drawer of my Kenmore oven.
No one knows about the warming drawer. I barely even realize I have a warming drawer until I cook a big holiday meal.
And, as I placed the bag into this hiding place, I told myself “Just PLEASE remember to take out the candy from here before you use the oven!”
I guess should have told myself this after I had my first cup of coffee that morning. Last night, I roasted chicken for dinner, at 400 for one hour.
It’s a good thing chocolate refreezes.
What’s a Nice Jewish Girl to do about Halloween?
Some of my neighbors really get into decorating for Halloween
My birthday falls in late October. I will not disclose my age, and those of you who know me know what that number is. Unless a birthday is one that ends in a 0 or a 5, birthdays at this stage of life are no big deal.
But think back to when you were a kid. Those were the days when one counted down the days to their birthday party. And if you were lucky enough to be born on the cusp of the Scorpio sign, birthday parties were all about Halloween. Late October babies have a built-in costumed, candy-corn flavored theme that is perfectly gift wrapped with a giant fake spiderweb and grooves to the music of a Monster Mash soundtrack.
Each year, even up through high school, I celebrated my birthday with a costume party. On my seventh or eighth birthday, my grandmother transformed herself into a gypsy storyteller to the delight of all my costumed friends. My parents and grandparents even staged special effects, complete with a charmed stuffed snake to rise out of a wicker basket with the help of an invisible fishing wire.
All through childhood, my mother and grandmother were the master costume makers. My mom said that when she was growing up in her Bensonhurst, Brooklyn apartment, my grandmother would dress up as a witch and concoct costumes for every kid in the building.
And when it was my turn to dress up, mom and grandma could make me into anything I wanted because they both knew their way around a sewing machine. Pity my own children this time of year. I cook, I bake, I garden, I teach, I read Torah, but I cannot even decently hem a pair of pants.
I wanted to be a sunflower one year: mom made me a sunflower. And then scarecrow, and Indian Princess, and even a hairdryer. And my final Halloween birthday party, I made a really convincing Boy George.
Halloween birthday parties, trick-or-treating and getting candy went on happily and innocently until the seventh grade. That year, Halloween fell out on a Tuesday which was afternoon Hebrew School.
Hebrew School started at 4:30 and let out around 6 p.m. Through Chumash (bible) lessons, you could feel the tension in the class start to bubble like a witch’s cauldron: we were missing out on prime trick-or-treating time! We realized that by the time we got home, scarfed down some dinner and put on our costumes, maybe we could collect half a pillowcase worth of candy if we were lucky. But we had a plan.
“Rabbi,” one of our classmates sweetly inquired, “Can we get out of Hebrew School early today so we can go trick-or-treating?”
“Yeladim!” He shouted, saying the Hebrew word for children. “Jewish children should not celebrate Halloween. It is NOT a Jewish Holiday! If you want to dress up and have fun, we can do that later in the year, on Purim.”
In unison, the entire class gasped in disbelief. Up till this point, we were all completely unaware that Halloween could have other meanings besides dressing up, running around the neighborhood and getting candy. And, in the streets of Staten Island, we didn’t exactly live in a part of the world where Purim, a costume-filled Jewish holiday in the spring, was universally celebrated.
We were not deterred that night, or any year after, from our right as American kids to trick-or-treat. Okay, Halloween is not a Jewish holiday. In fact, I knew even back then that Halloween must have some Christian implications, because all the parochial school kids I knew in my neighborhood had off Nov. 1 for All Saint’s Day.
Halloween must be okay because my grandmother, the most Jewish lady I knew, still loved Halloween. One year, my grandparents went to Greenwich Village to see the famous Halloween parade. My grandmother had a blast and made friends with everyone, including “all the nice young men dressed up in the most elaborate costumes” who offered her a chair along the parade route.
My Yiddishe grandma, the one who made gifilte fish from scratch and sang me Jewish songs, found delight in hanging out in the Village with the drag queens on Halloween!
I always wanted to go into the Village for Halloween, but it wasn’t until my grandparents raved about it did I got the nerve to go to one of the best places in the country to celebrate on Oct. 31.
I spent two Halloweens in the Village in my 20’s, although I didn’t wear a costume. Then, out in San Francisco’s Castro district, I dressed as Mona Lisa in a frame and my beloved dressed as the Mad Hatter. People sang “Mona Lisa” to me. A few people even got the Elton John reference and sang a few bars of that song with us. The streets got crowded, and my frame did get entangled with other costumes, but it was all in good fun.
Those were some of the most memorable nights of my life. More than the candy, as young adult I saw Halloween as a time when people can express themselves and become someone else for just one night. Halloween costumes break down barriers between strangers. But beneath the costumes and candy, the darker messages that lurk below are just plain not Jewish.
I still love Halloween and my heart is tied to the Halloween memories of my childhood. But Halloween has shifted lower on my priority list.
After a month of putting energies into the Jewish fall holidays I mentioned in a recent blog post, I have little desire to turn my front lawn into a graveyard or put together a costume with a hot glue gun.
But we still carve our pumpkin. And I still let my kids go trick-or-treating. But they well understand and love that come spring, we will be busy making hamantashen cookies and baskets of food for friends and neighbors for the Jewish holiday of Purim. In that way, they learn that Purim, when you walk around the neighborhood giving treats, is in essence the exact opposite of Halloween’s tradition of going around the neighborhood begging for treats.
Am I sending my Jewish children mixed messages? Maybe. Will I someday, because of Jewish observance, let go of Halloween go altogether? Perhaps.
But in the meantime, it’s still fun to walk the neighborhood’s darkened streets, check out the glow in the dark decorations, and maybe get a little scared.
Remembering the Bullies
The death of Tyler Clementi is sad proof that bullying is alive and well, even after decades of anti-bullying and tolerance education. What hurts is that this happened at Rutgers University, my college, a place that is supposed to foster higher learning, diversity and tolerance. In the 20 years since I graduated from Rutgers and the 30 years that have passed since my childhood days of being a repeated target to bullies, this death makes me realize that society has gone nowhere when it comes to bullies: conform to what they want you to be or be ridiculed and tormented without mercy.
This suicide, along with the other suicides reported in the news because of bullying, brought up painful memories of my own tormenters. While this wave of anti-gay bullying seems to be the cruelest form of tormenting a human soul, it doesn’t matter if you are gay, straight, black, white, rich or poor. Bullies find their target, draw you out and go in for the kill without mercy.
My first encounter with a bully was in the fifth grade with the boy next door. He would beat me up at the bus stop in the afternoon after I reported him to the early afternoon release bus driver that he was bothering me.
I don’t think the bus driver stopped as my attacker repeatedly unfurled punches into my stomach. He came back for another round in the playground the next day as I played jump rope with some friends in the playground. This time I was ready and delivered him a very satisfying punch in the eye. I made him cry and it felt good. I wised up and took the early shift bus home that afternoon. He never bothered me again.
Then in the seventh grade came even worse bullying, the bullying of the queen bee female kind. The whispers, the looks, and finally, getting tripped down the stairwell between classes.
I was a bully’s dream. I was timid and skinny. I was one of the only Jewish kids in school and yes, I had pennies thrown at me. I had a small face and a big nose. I was called every name in the book: The nose knows nothing. The nose who inhaled Tokyo. Nosenstein. Clinger.
But then again, you also got bullied if you were timid and fat. Anything that made you different made you a target. I can only imagine the torment a young adolescent or young college student faces if a bully finds out you are gay.
My bullying happened before the days of anti-bullying education, a topic that comes up so much in today’s middle school classroom that my eighth-grade daughter says she is sick of hearing about it. Back then, if you were bullied could muster up enough courage to tell a teacher or school administrator about it, you were basically told to ignore the bully. Don’t be a snitch. Stand up for yourself, and eventually, they will go away.
But a bully never acts without a fellow bullier, and it’s hard to ignore a pack of bullies, especially when they are holding you down in the schoolyard and smearing your face with carbon copy paper. One advantage, of being bullied today: scarcity of carbon copy paper.
I don’t know where any schoolyard aides were when this was happening. I also don’t understand why my gym teacher didn’t intervene when they held me down again, took off my sneakers and threw them over to the other side of the gym to the boy’s side. Nor do I understand why my band teacher didn’t see how I was teased as I cried one day into my clarinet.
One day in the cafeteria, the queen bee bully pulls me by my necklace, a Jewish star, and tells me to throw her lunch away. I tell her no.
She then tells me, in front of the worker bees: “You better hide your ass inside your house, because we are coming today to kick the shit out of you.”
I try to shrug it off and walk away. Because that’s what your teacher told you to do, ignore them, right? After all, they didn’t know where I lived. These girls lived across town. And this was the time before GPS, before texting and cyberbullying. At least at home I would be safe.
Regardless, I walked home pretty quickly after I got off the bus. My mom had gone back to work and I had a key to the house. But that day, I realized I forgot my key. Locked out of the house, with the threats of getting the shit beaten out of me very fresh on my mind, I went into my backyard, kicked in the basement window, and shimmied into the laundry room. Lucky I was a skinny kid.
And they did come. With a baseball bat. They found a younger smaller boy in my neighborhood and grabbed him by the collar and threatened him with the bat until he told them where I lived. They rang my doorbell and said they just wanted to talk to me. I –stupidly!– opened the door. They tried to shove their way in but I somehow got the door closed and locked and I bolted up the stairs to call my mother’s office.
I can’t remember what happened next in the exact order. I think my mom called the police, and then she told me to call the mother of one of the few friends I had in school. As proof of how seriously bullying was taken back then, the police showed up about 45 minutes later, long after my friends’ mom came, long after she scared them away.
I still think about that day. I still think about what they would have done to me, with that baseball bat, if I was not strong enough to get that door shut.
If any bullying educator out there is reading this, I know this sounds bizarre, but please consider the plight of the bully as well as their victims. It turns out that the boy next door: he was being raised by his grandparents after his own abusive mother pushed him out the window and broke his legs as a child.
And the queen bee? Well, finally, after the baseball bat incident, she, her worker bee bully accomplice and I were called into the principal’s office. It turns out that my bully’s mother was dying of cancer.
As hellish as my middle school years were, I feel very lucky that I was bullied before the digital age and I hope my kids survive their adolescence unscathed. It seems like a lot more damage can be done with a video camera and a social networking site than a baseball bat.
About Me
Kreativ Blogger
Versatile Blogger Award
Stacy Gittleman 