The Bean Stands Alone

So, Bean can now add "proficient in standing" to his ever-growing resume. Naturally, T and I are thrilled!

One of my favorite things about these milestones is how much you're forced to acknowledge even the--let's face it--most basic achievement. Bean will stand, but he insists on screaming in jubilation every time he does it, and he grins at you in that way that demands you clap and shout and jump up and down and generally share in his triumph the way babies do, by being way, way over the top about it.

And so we oblige, and this makes me think of one of my favorite "What if?" games. What if you treated everyone the way you treat your kid? At work, that might look something like this (and you've probably seen it before, in bad movies if not in real life):

COWORKER: I went ahead and booked that meeting room for us.
YOU: (in squealy voice, applauding and jumping up and down) Oh my god! You did it! You go! You amaze me! You are such a big, big boy! I have to get the camera! T, where is it? Where's the camera? I have to take pictures of this moment!

Is this how sarcasm was born? Did a bunch of parents start thinking it would be funny to treat everyone in the world this way?

Anyway, congratulations, Bean, on graduating from being 30 inches long to 2'6" tall. And, of course, on pushing the cats one step closer toward a collective mental collapse and on making sure your parents remember to celebrate the things worth celebrating.

I'll Tell You Right Now That the Butler Didn't Do It

Last weekend, T and I hosted a murder-mystery dinner party, the kind where each person plays the role of a suspect. I know, I know. You're thinking, "Dorky! I would never do that," but at the same time, you're thinking, "I would kind of want to do that."

Anyway, we had stellar guests: They dressed up, they played their parts with gusto, and they were careful not to get so wrapped up in the game that we began to wonder if they were (dramatic stage whisper) theatre people.

So, it was fun. Bean played the role of Victoria Lester, the murdered woman, perfectly in that he ran around for a while, screamed, and collapsed for the night. T was somehow able to channel "big shot in oil" Big Bill Bradford, our friends rock, and there was alcohol, so all was good.

The one thing, though, was that this game was produced for, I don't know, maybe four cents, as I believe the cover art demonstrates. Max Haines, murder-mystery dinner-party creator extraordinaire, lends his services as a consultant based on his "knowledge and research of murder mystery," and the writing leaves one...confused. (For the record, each guest gets a generalized script to read from that outlines what his/her character should reveal in a given scene.) Many times over the course of the evening, someone would declare, "I was jealous because she couldn't have him! I mean, I couldn't have him. I mean, wait. Who couldn't have him? I think it was me, but the wording here is a little confusing."

Really, though, the badness was part of the fun. Can you imagine what a well-done murder-mystery dinner party would look like? It would look dorky, that's what.

Anne, Anne, Are You Okay?

Ever since Bean was born, I've done what any good mother would do: I've become increasingly paranoid that my child will choke on anything larger than 1/16 of a sunflower seed, and I've become increasingly convinced that he should probably just eat rice cereal for the rest of his life so we can avoid living the horror stories parents seem to love to tell about the time their kid almost died eating a Gummi bear.

The other thing I did was brush up on my CPR skills. The infant dummy is strange and slightly scary--you have to blow up its body!--but most of us have distinct memories of Anne, the gold standard of resuscitation dummies.

For the curious, Anne was a real person and a probable suicide. I'm not sure what you could do with this information--be nice the next time you give her mouth-to-mouth, I guess? But still, it's interesting, the faces we use and for what. Now to track down that ever-elusive Gerber baby . . .

Photo: Anne

Update: The Gerber baby has been found! (Actually, she wasn't very hard to track down. And she is not Humphrey Bogart.)

So Over Being Zero

A year ago today, many things happened.

1. Our cats died a little inside.

2. I discovered that chastely pronouncing yourself "not of the body" does not exclude you from being completely and 100% of the body during labor, which is really, really gross.

3. I learned that you can have two men of your dreams at once. (Such men can even cohabitate if you play your cards right, ladies!)

Over the past year, we've seen Bean do so many things for the first time: squirm, roll over, hold his head up, crawl, smile, laugh, recognize his family and friends, say a few simple words, stand up, grow hair, lose hair, grow hair again, discover emotions, give the best hugs, smear cake all over his face like a drunken maniac (above), and turn into a little boy. It's almost impossible to think that we met him just one year ago. He's been here forever, really.

Happy MLK Jr. Day

Nearly 20 years ago, I won a local MLK Jr. essay contest. I was twelve, and the winners in other age categories and I were invited to speak at a banquet honoring Dr. King. There were hundreds of people at the banquet, and I was petrified, but I was also terribly proud of myself. I'd gotten a $75 savings bond and a big pat on the back from my parents, my teachers, and even my principal. (Those of you who know me know that I thrive on pats on the back.)

But even as a kid, even when I was walking up to the microphone during the banquet, I suspected the contest judges had made a mistake. This wasn't modesty--I've had a classic writer's ego all my life. Instead, I had a vague feeling that I'd managed to infuse my essay with the proper emotions not necessarily because I was articulating something real in me, but because I'd learned enough about the form to employ a few simple techniques, such as using a quote from King and letting his eloquence close out my essay. I felt a little like a fake.

(Keep in mind, this was also the year I won a personal-narrative contest for writing about a best friend who died in my arms Christmas Eve. My language-arts teacher had told us--I swear!--that personal narratives could be made up, even though they're generally, um, not. Of course, my narrative was completely untrue and entirely inspired by Beaches, much to the chagrin of the contest runner-up, who'd written with brutal honesty about the time she accidentally ate rabbit poop.)

Maybe it's too much to expect that I would have, at twelve, looked across the banquet crowd and understood that most of the people in the audience had been around for the Civil Rights Movement, that most of them could remember what life had been like before King and others gained voice, that King's work affects all of us, and that the Movement wasn't an era that had tidily ended with his life. I don't know what criteria the contest judges were working with, if they were seeking authenticity or an accurate portrayal of King or good grammar or what. I don't think I tricked anyone, exactly. First, I wasn't mature enough or smart enough to do that. Second, I do think I felt something when I wrote my essay, but I suspect those emotions were akin to the emotions I felt when singing "The Wind Beneath My Wings" to myself in my bedroom mirror. Basically, shallow and highly self-conscious. Could I have been capable of more? I don't know. The only ages I'm familiar with these days, from a developmental standpoint, are thirty-two and one.

Today, I read student writing for a living. Often, I'll read the work of a student who's nailed the academic voice or who has a great ear for rhythm and syntax, but who seems, to me, at least, more concerned with form than substance. I think the two are intertwined, but I also worry about what happens when saying something the right way takes precedence over what's being said. (Current discussions about the role of political rhetoric have me thinking about this even more right now.) My worries take me back to that essay contest and, although I guess I can give myself a little break for being a selfish twelve-year-old, I do think I took from that experience a fledgling sense of how important having empathy and something at stake is to a writer. I'm still self-conscious and probably shallow--this post is trite to me--but I want to move in the right direction. The difference this year, since Bean's been around, is that I don't just want to be a better writer (I've always wanted that, and anyway, that's really about me again), but I want to be, finally, a better participant in the good things people are trying to do in this world.

Slow News Day

Whenever my brother and sister-in-law visit from Phoenix, they love to watch and read local news. Although they both grew up in Iowa, they've lived in a big city for enough time that stories about jaywalking and the upcoming Cattle Congress interest them. (And by "interest them" I mean they make fun and say that nothing ever happens in Iowa.)

Well, I would argue that CNN isn't so different from The Waterloo Courier. To demonstrate, here are a few of CNN's top headlines at the moment:

"Five things not to do in the ER"
"I-Reporter catches possible UFO on tape"
"Oh no! Is it Splitsville for Spider-Man and MJ?"
"Dog falls off cliff, gets trapped on ledge"

I'm sure there are a lot of things that could be said about how the media has evolved with the Internet, how headlines like these say something about Americans' interests, and so on, but I'll leave it at this: In my next life, I want to be a headline-writer for CNN.

Why Andy Rooney Is What's Wrong with This Country

Andy Rooney's face has periodically appeared on my television since I was a child, but it's only been in the past year or so that I've realized just how ridiculous he is.

First, let me back up.

A little over a year ago, Trevor and I became addicted to The Amazing Race. Because nothing says "The Amazing Race is about to start" like Andy Rooney, we began to tune in, and at first we thought Andy was sort of delightful and harmless, like your great aunt's Shih Tzu that growls at everyone from its bed in the corner.

Or, better, like a third grader with amazing eyebrows. Take this, from Andy's 10/14/07 segment, titled "What's Your Favorite Season?"

Most of us have a favorite season of the year but if we had the same weather for all 12 months, even if it was the weather we like the best, I don't think anyone would like it.

The island of Jamaica is supposed to have some of the best weather in the world for 12 months of the year but you couldn't pay me to live in Jamaica. There's just so much beautiful warm weather I can take. I like a little of this but then I'd want a change.

I think if we had a vote, fall would probably be most people's favorite season. Some people who like fall call it autumn. I never use the word "autumn." It sounds pretentious.

And that pretty much sums up Andy Rooney. Until, that is, he's being so stunningly cantankerous that I want to do something mean to him, like make him listen to the Ramones. Consider, if you will, Andy's segment "Andy Thinks About Money," in which Andy claims that a) he is not rich, and b) if he were rich, he wouldn't have to think up something to say each week.

Okay, well. Here is where I get grouchy, because a) Andy Rooney made $7700 a week in 1987, and b) his job consists of writing tiny segments that probably take less time to think up than they do to speak out loud.

I can think of a few good responses to all this Rooney-esque griping. First, I don't have to watch. True, but if you were at Christmas dinner, say, and your crazy uncle was about to go on his annual drunken, aimless tirade, would you be able to turn away? He is, for all the wrong reasons, a fascinating study. Second, Andy Rooney might just have enough fans to keep his implausible television existence going. Possibly. (And I guess, since we are usually watching TV at 6:57pm on Sundays, T and I are in that fan group, aren't we? Oops.)

I see two possibilities, ultimately: Either someone, somewhere is afraid to push Andy Rooney into retirement, or someone, somewhere thinks Andy Rooney's a damn fine writer. They're both miserable possibilities, in my opinion, and I'm not even sure which is worse--the one that condones complete passivity or the one that sets the bar so low an aphid couldn't crawl under it.

Oh, who am I kidding? I just wanted to make fun of Andy Rooney. I know he's old and has done some remarkable things in his life, but I just can't claim to be above this sort of thing. Assuming Rooney's salary hasn't changed since 1987, this man makes more money listing his favorite types of milk than I do in months, and he doesn't seem to have even one good suit to show for it, which might be the biggest insult of all.