May I Quote You on That?

You know how sometimes you read something a celebrity has said and you think, “Thanks for explaining the Fukushima nuclear disaster so clearly, Miley Cyrus”? Were you to spend any time wondering about this (which in this case you wouldn’t because it’s Miley Cyrus, but work with me here) you might question the wisdom of a reporter asking her about, well, anything.

I have never been a fan of people spouting off about subjects when the only concrete knowledge they have of them is that they have an opinion. This is probably why I only read two Facebook pages and my own is one of them. (Yours is the other. You are smart and fascinating. Trust me.) I know that talking out your ass is not only a popular pastime but it’s one of our rights as Americans. The first amendment is basically the right to talk out your ass. But just because a question is asked, should you answer it in a public forum if you know you’re only talking out your ass? What do you think, 2009 beauty pageant contestant? What would you say if asked, “Should the U.S. have universal health care as a right of citizenship?”

"I think this is an issue of integrity regardless of which end of the political spectrum that I stand on. I was raised in a family to know right from wrong and politics, whether or not you fall in the middle, the left or the right it’s an issue of integrity, no matter what your opinion is, and I say that with the utmost conviction."

Saying it with conviction is what made her a winner, ladies and gentleman. Miss Congeniality probably gave a really incoherent, stupid answer. But what if she had said, “I’m an eighteen year old girl. I appreciate your asking but I don’t really feel informed enough to give a nationally broadcast answer to that question”? Ironically the audience would have thought she was an idiot.

For the last several weeks, I have been doing interviews in order to promote my book. I’ve gotten pretty good at deflecting when questions are outside the scope of my expertise, even though it’s hard not to answer questions in an interview when you are a people-pleaser and a talker like I am. It would be so much easier and make the conversation flow so much better if I would just talk about things I know nothing about. One reporter asked me an odd, racially charged question that was related to the material in my book by a very long, twisty thread. While I could kind of follow her thought process and see how she got there and how this issue might be a tangential, shirt-tail relative of a small aspect of a line in one chapter of my book, I knew I had no knowledge of her subject matter. I also knew that the last topic of conversation I wanted to pull out of my ass was an area of midcentury race relations of which I am woefully uniformed. I complimented the reporter on her amazingly creative question and didn’t answer it.

Because my book features a character with an autistic spectrum disorder, I am asked a lot of questions about autism. As the mom of an adult child who has Asperger’s Syndrome and as a former teacher in a school for kids with language-based learning disabilities, I’ve had both training in and experience with autism. But I have too much respect for the material to offer uninformed, potentially dangerous opinions in public forums. Vaccines, special diets, changes in the DSM V, increase in numbers—I’ve heard the same things you’ve heard and I’ve read the same reports you’ve read. But that doesn’t make me an expert and it would be irresponsible for me to pretend it does.

What say you 2007 teen pageant contestant? I’ve got a question for you. Why can’t one fifth of Americans identify the US on a world map?

"I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as in, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq and everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children."

Oh, Sweetie, I think you pulled that out of your ass. Just say you have no idea.

Shades of I Wish I’d Written that Book but I Don’t Really Get it

Have you read the sex novel yet? You know the one. It’s been all over the news that when women read this book they want to have sex. I’m reading it and it doesn’t make me want to have sex. It makes me want to lecture the twenty one year old girl in it. It makes me want to edit it.

Normally, I don’t believe in throwing anyone’s book under the bus. First, because writing a book is really hard. Not crab-boat-coal-mine-jobs hard, but it’s hard to stare at a blank word document and write words so amazing and insightful that you want to share them with the world so strangers can criticize them. Second, opinions about books and their content is really, really subjective (this is always the last sentence of a rejection letter, BTW, right before the agent wishes you good luck finding another agent.) Just because I don’t like a book doesn’t mean that ten million other people won’t like it. Can I just have a moment here? I googled that. More than ten million copies of that damn book have been sold. Note to self- learn to love this genre and write it. But since the Sex Novel has gone beyond being a book and has become instead, a phenomenon, I feel okay about “discussing it.” Besides, the author has sold so many copies that one bitter, newby writer saying, “I don’t get it” won’t even make a blip on her gigantic bestselling screen.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that I have daughters the same age as the college-girl-turned-sex-slave in the Sex Novel so I begin the whole process from the place of euwww. And I’m mad at the girl’s parents for not having exposed her to enough people and places for the first twenty one years of her life. She goes to an office building and she is so impressed by elevators and windows, she’s ready to screw anyone with a file cabinet. And why isn’t she more confident? Sweetie, you’re about to graduate from college, you’re not a seven year old! Sit up straight, ask this asshole questions for the college newspaper, write the answers and take them home to your stupid reporter roommate who sent you to do her job just because she got the sniffles (and if I were her mother, I would tell her to take the Dayquil and go and interview the asshole herself—sometimes we get sick but we still have work to do. Suck it up cupcake!) I’ve barely made it past the premise of the book and I’m already pissed off! I’m not feeling like having sex yet but I would totally stop reading at this point and have a discussion with my husband. I want to talk about the raising of our daughters so I could get reassurance that they are smarter and more confident than Sex Novel Girl. Clearly, I already don’t get it.

Beyond the content itself, I have grammar and word issue issues. I’m annoyed by words being used as verbs when they’re not really verbs. Like disrespect. Disrespect was a perfectly good noun for decades. Why does is have to be a verb now? I also hate weirdly ineffectual adverbs (not like “weirdly,” that’s the perfect adverb for this sentence. Because this is my blog, that’s why.) I’m not a big fan of adverbs anyway, they kind of stop me in my tracks when I’m reading and I analyze whether they should be there or not. The verbs-that-should-be-nouns and awkward adverbs were distracting. “His mouth quirks up, and he stares appraisingly at me.” “He shrugs noncommittally.” “His eyes narrow, speculatively.” “Andrea hesitates, gaping at him.” I’ll grant that one could probably stare appraisingly, although “appraising” does suggest a bit more eye movement than does staring. But how does a mouth quirk? How does anything quirk? Can quirk really be a verb? He quirks, she quirks, we are quirking? And isn’t a shrug by nature noncommittal? “He firmly accepted the proposal with a shrug.” I know, I know, I’m totally missing the point. Although if Andrea in her entirety is gaping at him, what does he need the college girl for? Andrea appears to be easy pickings!

You’re thinking. “God, Rebecca, you are such an uptight bitch! And you are just jealous that millions more people bought the Sex Novel than the stupid novel you wrote.” Totally. You are right on both accounts. I am the first to admit that I am both an uptight bitch and very jealous. Let’s take that statement as a given.

Okay- blah, blah, blah, helicopter, blah, blah, blah, sex dungeon, blah, blah, blah, signed a nondisclosure agreement before Richy Rich tied me up and humiliated me—finally the sex scene cometh!

Ladies, he’s such a creeper, how does this excite you? He has such a disturbing Daddy/daughter relationship with Sex Novel College Girl. I mean I know women get off on all kinds of weird fantasies, stuff they wouldn’t actually want to do in real life but he makes me feel so icky. And she makes me feel so irritated. And they’re quirking all over the place! Lips quirk sixteen times in this book, I searched it! And eyebrows quirk once. How can any woman get in the mood in the presence of such misuse of a perfectly good noun?

Do I wish I’d written this? Hell, yes! But I didn’t. And my novel about an autistic child isn’t going to have the same wide range appeal. I probably won’t finish reading the Sex Novel though. It’s supposed to instill sexual desire not the desire to attack my ereader with a red pen and call my children and yell at them about the importance of high self-esteem. I know this book is a huge club that millions of women have joined but I don’t get it. It only made me shrug appraisingly and quirk noncommittally.

I steal a lot of material from my children’s lives. First, because their lives have not been very—how should I put this—linear so they’ve given me lots of material. And second, my kids aren’t my demographic so I can pretty much write anything I want to about them and, chances are, they won’t read it.

Funny story: last week my twenty five year old’s boyfriend of six months came to my house and broke up with her. It was super extra awkward because she doesn’t even live at my house. He waited until he’d finished having dinner with the family and broke up with her on his way out. It was a—how should I put this— dick move. Before I reacted I had to think, as I’ve learned to do in these situations WWABMD? I know you can figure out the two W’s and the D. This abbreviation started with Jesus and has trickled down into the lexicon of phrases we use cleverly and ironically to suit our own purposes. But WWABMD stands for “What would anyone but me do?” I can be a little—how should I put this—emotionally reactive so sometimes I need to take a deep breath, focus, and think like somebody else for a moment.

Now that my two children are in their twenties, I find myself thinking WWABMD quite often. So often in fact, I’m thinking of putting it on a bracelet. People could wear it between that red string that confused celebrities wear and that yellow rubber Lance Armstrong one. When my girls were little and someone hurt their feelings, solutions were simple. No birthday party invitation? Invite a friend over. Invite twelve friends. Invite all the girls in the class except for the one little brat that excluded my kid in the first place and get a bounce house and all of the Disney princesses and puppies and cupcakes—WWABMD. See where my mind goes? This is why I have to take a moment to rein myself in. I want to spare their feelings, make sure they don’t hurt and go to great and excessive lengths to accomplish this.

Younger children will forgive a bit of overly enthusiastic parenting. But with an adult child you tread a very fine line. The break up with the—how should I put this—asshole last week was not my daughter’s first heartbreak. Let’s take a moment to talk about Dillweed.

Dillweed is my daughter’s ex-boyfriend from college. After college they moved in together. It was a—how should I put this—effing disaster. When my daughter made the decision that Dillweed was way cooler at school than he was sharing her bathroom, she broke up with him. Just as the weeping and wailing died down (honestly, my husband can be such a drama queen) Dillweed’s mom called from her home far, far away in another state. Seems she heard that my daughter had given her son the boot and Mama Dillweed was not having it. Now, Dillweed’s mom could use a bracelet for sure. If not a WWABMD bracelet then a breast cancer one, a charm bracelet, hell, silly bands—anything she could use to smack herself in the head before she makes a decision to call the parents of her twenty four year old son’s ex-girlfriend to yell at them for what their daughter did. The only thing that would have made Mama Dillweed happy is if I’d given my daughter a time out and made her promise to marry Dillweed so his feeling wouldn’t be hurt. Dillweed’s mom continued her rampage with more phone calls and emails then she flew across the country, packed up Dillweed, paid a couple grand to ship his car, and bore him safely home on the wind beneath her wings.

Much as I mocked Dillweed’s mom (and I did mock her. After all, mocking is kind of my—how should I put this—schtick) I kinda got where she was coming from when Mr. Dick Move made his move last week. My daughter came back into my house crying hysterically because instead of the “goodnight” she was expecting on the front porch, she got “I think we should take a break from seeing each other.” I wanted to follow Dick home in my car so I could yell at him for being such an insensitive tool. I wanted to call his mom even though I’ve never met his mom and email his entire extended family so they would know what an awful jerk he is. I just wanted to make him hurt as much as he had hurt her.

I didn’t do any of those things. Instead, I sat on the floor next to her while she cried. I put her to bed in her childhood room and I slept nearby on a sofa just in case she “needed me.” After a couple of days of dissecting Dick Move and their relationship with her girlfriends, she was pretty much over it. I did her laundry, made her some food and sent her on her way. I may have taken a moment here and there to consider WWABMD, but in the end I did what—how should I put this—a mom would do.

Here is the entry I posted on Caroline Leavitt's blog this week. I don't plan to re-post the same thing over and over but now I saved you a click!

Mommy Competition

If you’ve spent a good portion of your adult life either driving a car or looking for your keys so you can drive your car, chances are you’re a mom. And if you’re a mom, chances are you occasionally have doubts that you’re doing it right. Okay, you frequently have doubts. You wallow in doubt. You lap it up from a spoon and wear it daily as a skin suit Silence of the Lambs style. This insecurity fuels something I call Mommy Competition. You know what it is, it’s that need to figure out who’s doing it better. That uncontrollable desire to look at another mom’s kids, do a quick assessment and decide who is the Alpha Mom and who is most likely to serve dinner by tossing a greasy bag of food from a drive-through window into the back seat of the mini-van on the way home.

The best way to quickly establish the identity of the Alpha Mom is to greet each other with A Question About Each Other’s Children. “Is he breastfed?” “Is she talking?” “Walking?” “Reading?” “Applying to preschool?” That’s right. I just said, “applying to preschool” like that’s a normal thing that normal three year olds do everywhere. They don’t. But in communities where there’s a waiting list for toddler tutors, Mommy Competition rises to a near professional level.

If you live in the school-by-application-only culture like I do, you’re lucky! Your town has conveniently set up a Mommy hierarchy for you! Recognizing the Alpha Mom is as easy as knowing the reputations of the local private schools. There are the good schools and there are the schools-your-kid-got-into-because-he-couldn’t-get-into-a-better-school-so-you-must-be-a-crappy-mom. It starts with preschool- “So, where is Hydrangea going to preschool?” What you’re really trying to find out is- Were you teaching your kid the alphabet while I was drinking wine and playing Yo Gabba Gabba on a continuous loop? Did you have a reward system for your child that never included you saying, “Fine. Here’s the damn cookie.”? …like me.

Most of the private elementary schools in my area have uniforms. This is a wonderful shortcut if you have to establish who the Alpha Mom is from a distance. (If your child’s school doesn’t believe in uniforms, there’s a whole different ranking system involving license plate holders and the Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s parking lots but it’s too complicated a formula to explore in such a brief blog post.) Should two moms encounter each other in the wild and the children are wearing uniforms, you can skip, “Where is Petunia in school?” and go straight to, “What is Carnation up to?” Carnation went to summer camp in Costa Rica where she hand pollinated indigenous vines and then she won the third grade science fair with the paper she wrote about it! Damn it. But Carnation isn’t in school right now. Yes! She’s got a tutor on set until her movie wraps. You win. I give.

My kids are in their mid-twenties so I should know better. And, in spite of (or maybe because of) my inability to ever rise to the role of the Alpha Mom based on this Mommy Competition criteria, my kids are seriously awesome! Seriously. Nevertheless, I actually did the let’s-see-how-I-rank-as-a-mom thing at a Pilates class yesterday. (Yes, I do know how that sounds. I already told you I live in a private school environment, that there are Pilates classes nearby shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.) I ran into a mom I hadn’t seen in about fifteen years and I greeted her with, “Oh my gosh, hi! So, what is Chrysanthemum up to?”

We were doing the back and forth about her kids and my kids (I was winning, by the way, it seems little Chrysanthemum is still living at home and hasn’t chosen a college major) and I suddenly realized what I was doing! I don’t want to do this, I’ve already won this game!  She’s won this game! Being a mom is hard, we shouldn’t be competing with each other, we should be supporting each other! So what if Chrysanthemum hasn’t chosen a college major, one of my kids flunked out of the first college she went to! And even though Carnation won the science fair in third grade, she could get bullied every day in fourth grade like my other kid did. Suddenly I blurted out, “I wrote a book! It’s about private school moms trying to live vicariously through their kids and what it’s like for one mom when her kid doesn’t fit in!” Our conversation stopped as my faux pas hung in the air. Did I really just start talking about myself instead of continuing to rank our kids’ accomplishments so we can identify the Alpha Mom?  We stared awkwardly at each other’s Lululemon workout gear for a moment not knowing what to say as if I had made a racial slur or an inappropriate political comment. Finally I broke the silence. “And I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to.”

Mommy Competition on Caroline Leavitt's Blog

What better way to start my blog than with a link to someone else's blog! It's not just anyone's blog, though. In addition to being one of my writing instructors at UCLA, Caroline Leavitt is a New York Times best selling author who is about to publish her tenth novel. Ironically, my post is about Mommy Competition. I say, "ironically" because, unlike the competitive moms in my post, Caroline believes in helping aspiring writers wherever she can. I am honored to be on Caroline Leavitt's blog today!

http://carolineleavittville.blogspot.com/2012/06/rebecca-woods-author-of-living-through.html