Sunday, April 22, 2007
Hide the Fart
My high score is something like 22,000.
The link above leads you to a game played by seventh graders in my school's t.v. crew. We have an in-school station which airs announcements every day. Its advisor, a new father, has taken some time off to get to know his son. I volunteered to stay after school for a little while every day to supervise the students.
There's not really much to do, thankfully. The kids know how to record the announcements, how to use the equipment, how to do it all. A director does all the hard work. There are two "talents," who read the announcements a la Peter Jennings. There are three kids who are on stand-by in case something should happen. These three kids play Hide the Fart and other games. They remind me of our district's tech suport personnel, which, as far as I can tell, do the exact same thing but get paid.
The staff of WDPS are all seventh graders. This year's eighth graders cannot be bothered to do much, whether it be participate in a trivia competition, join a club, or seek glory on the tv screens of Dogpatch Middle School. I had forgotten what seventh graders are like. They're enthusiastic. They're fun. They're annoying. They are tenacious. They try on personalities for size, like miniature yuppies. On the staff of WDPS we have the dramatic, witty, self-deprecating short kid; the overstressed, often-sighing, ballsy diva who is certain she's the only one who can get anything done but is actually clueless; the pudgy, disheveled nerdy kid who often closes his eyes condescendingly, as if the sight of all of the stupidity in the world is too much for him to bear; the borderline geeky jock who tries so hard to be cool that it's hard to watch; the twins, a boy and a girl, whose mother wanted them to join a club, but who aren't enjoying it at all and alternately wince and stare blankly when I ask them to do something.
So, Friday I oversaw WDPS, then wandered out into the beautiful spring day. On Saturday Tripper and I had a perfect day. We went to a gun shop, a brew-pub, a surplus fabric store, a farm-league baseball game. It was close to 80 degrees. Since he's a peach, he surprised me with a new team hat upon return from one of his smoke breaks, as my sunglasses weren't cutting it. Now that's romantic.
Today I need to mow the lawn. We'll see.
My father may be dangerously depressed again, I fear. He had to put his dog to sleep. He told my sister that he cried more for the dog than for his own father. (What's so strange about that? Pets rock.) He also told her that he's had two best friends in his life: one he just lost (the dog), and one he let go (my mother!!).
In lieu of thinking about my family or mowing the lawn, I think I'll play Hide the Fart. Maybe I'll make it to 30,000.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Familypalooza
It's almost 1 o'clock in the afternoon. Tripper is heading to his mother's, where his brother and family are visiting from a large eastern city. One o'clock is the time we thought we were going to eat. One o'clock is the time Carlin, Kelly, and Baby Ruth thought we were going to eat. Tripper's mother, however, insists it was five o'clock all the time. She's the only one who was under this impression. Tripper's mother drives her sons crazy, but they love her all the same, of course. I love her, too. At times I also pity her, which I'm sure she would not appreciate. Deborah Dee Devon hangs between two generations. She got her Mrs. degree at a time when the people who are now in the world's most hip retirement commercials were poised to change the world. She met Tripper's father, who was engaged to someone else, and six weeks later they were married. She was not "in trouble," but part of me wonders sometimes.
Some of her contemporaries burned their bras and marched into the 70's to become hippies and lobby for the ERA, but Deborah went back in time to become a 1950's housewife. She gave birth to two sons, grew flowers, decorated her house. She decided she did not drink, even though on weekend nights in their early days, she and Tripper's father played cards and drank a bottle of gin together in their first apartment, playing catch with ice across the old table in their small kitchen. She did not work. She den-mothered and raised funds for swim-team. She went to PTA meetings. She served on the boards of local charities. She baked cookies and clipped coupons and drove to three different grocery stores to find the best deals on meat, dairy, and produce.
When her sons were 9 and 7, she had the save-the-marriage baby.
After twenty-five years, Deborah's husband left her. She insists she has no idea why, even to this day. He slept on the couch because of his back. She couldn't consider getting a job when Carlin was in school, even if they did need the money! She was home to welcome Tripper and Chris from school, and she'd be home when Carlin came home. Of course she didn't go to counseling with her husband-- he was the one who said he was depressed. There was nothing wrong with her.
Deborah lives in a fairly large Victorian house she really can't afford to keep, even though it's paid off. She won't sell, which is her prerogative, but frets about her yard, the roof, the porch. How is she going to do this? How is she going fix that? At Christmas she still bakes thousands of cookies, even though attendance at her Christmas Eve open house has waned to point of non-exitence. She puts a tree in nearly every room, and urban sprawl has blighted her once tasteful and quaint Christmas village.
Appearances are very important to Deborah. It wasn't a good example for Carlin when Tripper moved in with me, but it hadn't looked good to the neighbors when Tripper stopped at home to shower and pick up some things after spending the night at my apartment.When she sends me birthday cards, they are addressed to Mrs. Tripper Snow, not Chrissy Snow. She didn't approve of our being introduced as Mr. and Mrs. Tripper and Chrissy Snow at our wedding reception. But he's not "Mr. Chrissy Snow..." When Carlin and Kelly learned they were having a baby, she was frantic. Because they aren't married, that's NOT Kelly's house. That house is Carlin's. Because they aren't married, she simply couldn't host a shower for Kelly, but she supposed she'd attend one.
She stopped smoking for about fifteen years or so, and won't admit that she has picked up the habit again, choosing instead to hide the evidence by wrapping up butts and ashes in aluminum foil and burying them in the trash. When we visited Chris and his wife, she stood in their bathtub, opened the window, and puffed away, acting like nothing had happened even though the entire house reeked of it.
So here I am, blogging instead of visiting. I told Tripper I couldn't do Familypalooza all weekend. Early yesterday afternoon he went to his dad's with Carlin. (Kelly, Baby Ruth, and I arrived a few hours later, stayed to visit and eat, and left by early evening.) When I found out we weren't eating until five today, I chose not to go over there too early. Tomorrow we have yet another gig at Tripper's dad's if we want to see Chris and the kids, but they simply couldn't ever spend their visit at our home and have their parents come to see them here.
I'm sure Tripper feels somewhat the same way about my family, but he agrees that there's always something going on at my mom's: swimming, watching movies, mixing drinks, making inappropriate jokes. We can sit and read if we want. I never feel like I'm playing a role in a nostalgic, days-of-yore period piece, where my lines go something like this: No, Deb, nothing has changed. You're still the perfect mother, still the perfect wife. What a lovely Jell-O salad. How do you manage to do all this?
