The Earthling's Notebook
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The Earthling's Notebook
The Cheap Thrills of Thrifty Fashion
Last night, our three-year-old night owl conked out at 8:00!! Daniel and I did a little dance of glee and launched into an evening of companionable adult pursuits, which of course included sorting through our wardrobes, getting out the winter clothes and putting away the summer ones, and deciding the fate of unwanted garments.
What? That's not your idea of fun and excitement? Well, you've got a point, but you have to realize that this sorting process includes my flinging off my clothes at unexpected moments, to try on other garments, and that adds to the romance. We had a lot of fun doing this job in parallel and getting to have a conversation that wasn't interrupted every 14 seconds by jabbering about trains or demands for more cheese. (The kid ate literally a quarter-pound of colby-jack yesterday! Apparently he has some sort of cheese deficiency.) Also, we were able to sort the clothes into many piles, without anyone coming along to show us The Way He Usually Does It.
We wound up with a lot of piles because we forced ourselves to give up some clothes that we really don't wear anymore, and each item had to be categorized according to what shreds of usefulness we believe still could be wrung out of it.
Both Daniel and I like to make clothes last as long as possible. The trouble is, when a garment has become shabby-looking or uncomfortable or somehow less appealing than other items, it winds up in the back of the drawer all season, not getting worn. Both of us have a strong instinct to hang onto things in case they might come in handy, and that often serves us well, but it's possible to take it too far.
For example, two years ago I bought three long-sleeved knit tops at Target because they were on sale and they came in such nice colors. I think I did try them on but had Nicholas with me and wasn't paying close enough attention to the fit, and I think they then shrank a little when washed. At any rate, by last winter these tops were tugging on my shoulders, discouraging my elbows from bending, and creeping up around my neck...but the useful colors and relative newness kept me from replacing them: "I can't buy that; I already have a royal blue long-sleeved top." Last night I put those tops on the yard sale pile. They'll go to someone who is the right size for them, and I can have tops that fit me!
And I don't have to buy them new. Today I'm wearing my "new" sweater, which makes me very happy; it's just the kind I wanted. I got it at Goodwill. I still have sweaters I got at Goodwill when I was in college 14 years ago. I still have a sweater I inherited from my grandma when she died 20 years ago, and I have worn it regularly every winter since then.
When you wash all your laundry in cold water and line-dry it, things last. Some things last a really long time. If you stay the same size (or nearly so), then you wind up with a lot of clothes that are 10, 15, 20 years old. This has its advantages: Your old familiar clothes are broken-in to your shape and weathered to cozy softness. On the other hand, you can wind up bored with the lack of novelty or looking frowsy because all your clothes are fraying at the edges. If you enjoy shopping, like I do, then you wind up buying new (to you) clothing and cramming it in next to things you can't bear to part with, and after a few years you're discovering that you own garments you'd forgotten all about because they got buried. (Two good methods of preventing this problem are to live in a very small home or to move every two years. We've abandoned those approaches for good reasons, but sometimes I miss them!)
Some clothes that are still wearable, in theory, are just not going to be purchased by any yard-sale shopper. Nobody wants to buy someone else's stretched-out socks worn thin in the heels, even if they aren't worn through and are a hard-to-find shade of green; you might be able to ditch them on the FREE STUFF! table, but only if somebody with a need for cleaning rags stops by. These clothes always make me think of the folktale about the man who "wore it and wore it until it was all worn out" and then cut it down and made a smaller garment. There's got to be some way to use them...
Say you have a nice soft knit shirt whose collar and hems have stretched out so that it looks sloppy. Cut them off. (Use really sharp scissors, not the ones you use to cut paper.) Now you have a hemless shirt that makes a comfortable inner layer under sweaters, where a collar can be too bunchy. If you get too hot and wind up exposing that shirt, you can tell everyone the Flashdance look is back in style! The cut-off bands of fabric can be used as hair bands, sleeping-bag ties, cable ties, or to hold vining plants in place.
Daniel brought out from storage two old tie-dyed T-shirts that he hadn't worn in years because they were falling apart but that he couldn't part with because of their cool patterns. One of them turned into an undershirt, as above. The other was so worn that it looked like Swiss cheese around the shoulders. I cut off that part and all the hems and seams. Then I spread out the usable fabric and cut it into 9-inch squares. (If you spread the fabric on carpet, you can press the ruler into it to make nice straight lines to cut on—no pencil or chalk needed!) Then I cut the rest into pieces of whatever size was convenient—most about 5"x9". The squares are 5 new, cool tie-dyed, very soft handkerchiefs for Daniel. The 6 odd-sized pieces will go into a box next to our bed, to be used like tissues but washed and re-used.
Old socks make great hand puppets. Just give them some clothes to cover the threadbare heels. I put my nicer-looking discarded socks into the bin of Girl Scout craft supplies and will look for an opportunity to suggest that my troop make sock puppets!
The rest of the old socks went into the rag bag, to be used for dusting and polishing things. Having a good supply of rags means we can throw them away after a cleaning job, rather than trying to get them clean and not send them back to the clothing drawers by accident.
Daniel had spent most of Saturday mending clothes, some of which he'd been wearing routinely even though they were falling to shreds. Last night he found that many of his winter clothes needed work, too. He held up his plaid flannel bathrobe and said musingly, "I think I can fix this," and I started rolling on the floor laughing because the robe had an enormous T-shaped rip in the lower rear portion, which last winter made him look like he was wearing a hospital gown, and which was now held together with a binder clip! It looked ridiculous, and seeing it brought back memories of how he looked in it last winter, and it was just preposterous to imagine trying to salvage it. (He did, though! He had saved the silly matching flannel bag—unsuitable for any other use because of the enormous scratchy tag sewn to the front of it with two rows of firm, tiny stitches—in which the robe had come from The Gap. He cut a patch from the bag and used it to reinforce the robe and sewed up the rips with the sewing machine. It now has a strangely puckered spot, but it looks like an old bathrobe again, instead of like something a homeless person would wear.)
We cast aside many items that had been with us for years: The sweatpants Daniel got for Christmas 1996 from our then-housemate Curt, made of black poly-cotton that held together really well but stretched to a shape appropriate for someone with a much larger butt and no calves. Those weird socks designed to make you look like you have shoes on, if your feet are shaped like shoes or at least are the right size for the socks, which mine are not. The cotton batik dress, missing its belt, cast off by one of my uncle Carl's friends when I was 12, which I used as a summer nightgown for 20 years and found convenient for breastfeeding because all the fabric at the sides of the chest has crumbled away. We put in our time with these garments, but now we're done!
We spent our evening marveling over old clothes that have served us for years and still look great, putting aside things we hope will find good homes with other people, getting excited over beautiful "new" hankies, planning yet more mending, laughing at the things we'd kept too long, modeling possible new combinations of old clothes, and winnowing our wardrobes to things we'll actually wear. We completed a chore, but we also spent time together, reminding ourselves how well our values match. We refilled our drawers and closet with clothes that are mostly far from the cutting edge of fashion, and we felt rich. We spend so little money on clothing, yet we have so much, enough to keep us warm and comfortable for weeks between launderings, and so many interesting and colorful garments, each one with its history and accumulating memories. We are determined to make the most of what we have, and last night we laughed at some of our sillier attempts to squeeze value out of every garment...but we laughed, too, because it's working, because we are swimming in an abundance of great stuff.
What? That's not your idea of fun and excitement? Well, you've got a point, but you have to realize that this sorting process includes my flinging off my clothes at unexpected moments, to try on other garments, and that adds to the romance. We had a lot of fun doing this job in parallel and getting to have a conversation that wasn't interrupted every 14 seconds by jabbering about trains or demands for more cheese. (The kid ate literally a quarter-pound of colby-jack yesterday! Apparently he has some sort of cheese deficiency.) Also, we were able to sort the clothes into many piles, without anyone coming along to show us The Way He Usually Does It.
We wound up with a lot of piles because we forced ourselves to give up some clothes that we really don't wear anymore, and each item had to be categorized according to what shreds of usefulness we believe still could be wrung out of it.
Both Daniel and I like to make clothes last as long as possible. The trouble is, when a garment has become shabby-looking or uncomfortable or somehow less appealing than other items, it winds up in the back of the drawer all season, not getting worn. Both of us have a strong instinct to hang onto things in case they might come in handy, and that often serves us well, but it's possible to take it too far.
For example, two years ago I bought three long-sleeved knit tops at Target because they were on sale and they came in such nice colors. I think I did try them on but had Nicholas with me and wasn't paying close enough attention to the fit, and I think they then shrank a little when washed. At any rate, by last winter these tops were tugging on my shoulders, discouraging my elbows from bending, and creeping up around my neck...but the useful colors and relative newness kept me from replacing them: "I can't buy that; I already have a royal blue long-sleeved top." Last night I put those tops on the yard sale pile. They'll go to someone who is the right size for them, and I can have tops that fit me!
And I don't have to buy them new. Today I'm wearing my "new" sweater, which makes me very happy; it's just the kind I wanted. I got it at Goodwill. I still have sweaters I got at Goodwill when I was in college 14 years ago. I still have a sweater I inherited from my grandma when she died 20 years ago, and I have worn it regularly every winter since then.
When you wash all your laundry in cold water and line-dry it, things last. Some things last a really long time. If you stay the same size (or nearly so), then you wind up with a lot of clothes that are 10, 15, 20 years old. This has its advantages: Your old familiar clothes are broken-in to your shape and weathered to cozy softness. On the other hand, you can wind up bored with the lack of novelty or looking frowsy because all your clothes are fraying at the edges. If you enjoy shopping, like I do, then you wind up buying new (to you) clothing and cramming it in next to things you can't bear to part with, and after a few years you're discovering that you own garments you'd forgotten all about because they got buried. (Two good methods of preventing this problem are to live in a very small home or to move every two years. We've abandoned those approaches for good reasons, but sometimes I miss them!)
Some clothes that are still wearable, in theory, are just not going to be purchased by any yard-sale shopper. Nobody wants to buy someone else's stretched-out socks worn thin in the heels, even if they aren't worn through and are a hard-to-find shade of green; you might be able to ditch them on the FREE STUFF! table, but only if somebody with a need for cleaning rags stops by. These clothes always make me think of the folktale about the man who "wore it and wore it until it was all worn out" and then cut it down and made a smaller garment. There's got to be some way to use them...
Say you have a nice soft knit shirt whose collar and hems have stretched out so that it looks sloppy. Cut them off. (Use really sharp scissors, not the ones you use to cut paper.) Now you have a hemless shirt that makes a comfortable inner layer under sweaters, where a collar can be too bunchy. If you get too hot and wind up exposing that shirt, you can tell everyone the Flashdance look is back in style! The cut-off bands of fabric can be used as hair bands, sleeping-bag ties, cable ties, or to hold vining plants in place.
Daniel brought out from storage two old tie-dyed T-shirts that he hadn't worn in years because they were falling apart but that he couldn't part with because of their cool patterns. One of them turned into an undershirt, as above. The other was so worn that it looked like Swiss cheese around the shoulders. I cut off that part and all the hems and seams. Then I spread out the usable fabric and cut it into 9-inch squares. (If you spread the fabric on carpet, you can press the ruler into it to make nice straight lines to cut on—no pencil or chalk needed!) Then I cut the rest into pieces of whatever size was convenient—most about 5"x9". The squares are 5 new, cool tie-dyed, very soft handkerchiefs for Daniel. The 6 odd-sized pieces will go into a box next to our bed, to be used like tissues but washed and re-used.
Old socks make great hand puppets. Just give them some clothes to cover the threadbare heels. I put my nicer-looking discarded socks into the bin of Girl Scout craft supplies and will look for an opportunity to suggest that my troop make sock puppets!
The rest of the old socks went into the rag bag, to be used for dusting and polishing things. Having a good supply of rags means we can throw them away after a cleaning job, rather than trying to get them clean and not send them back to the clothing drawers by accident.
Daniel had spent most of Saturday mending clothes, some of which he'd been wearing routinely even though they were falling to shreds. Last night he found that many of his winter clothes needed work, too. He held up his plaid flannel bathrobe and said musingly, "I think I can fix this," and I started rolling on the floor laughing because the robe had an enormous T-shaped rip in the lower rear portion, which last winter made him look like he was wearing a hospital gown, and which was now held together with a binder clip! It looked ridiculous, and seeing it brought back memories of how he looked in it last winter, and it was just preposterous to imagine trying to salvage it. (He did, though! He had saved the silly matching flannel bag—unsuitable for any other use because of the enormous scratchy tag sewn to the front of it with two rows of firm, tiny stitches—in which the robe had come from The Gap. He cut a patch from the bag and used it to reinforce the robe and sewed up the rips with the sewing machine. It now has a strangely puckered spot, but it looks like an old bathrobe again, instead of like something a homeless person would wear.)
We cast aside many items that had been with us for years: The sweatpants Daniel got for Christmas 1996 from our then-housemate Curt, made of black poly-cotton that held together really well but stretched to a shape appropriate for someone with a much larger butt and no calves. Those weird socks designed to make you look like you have shoes on, if your feet are shaped like shoes or at least are the right size for the socks, which mine are not. The cotton batik dress, missing its belt, cast off by one of my uncle Carl's friends when I was 12, which I used as a summer nightgown for 20 years and found convenient for breastfeeding because all the fabric at the sides of the chest has crumbled away. We put in our time with these garments, but now we're done!
We spent our evening marveling over old clothes that have served us for years and still look great, putting aside things we hope will find good homes with other people, getting excited over beautiful "new" hankies, planning yet more mending, laughing at the things we'd kept too long, modeling possible new combinations of old clothes, and winnowing our wardrobes to things we'll actually wear. We completed a chore, but we also spent time together, reminding ourselves how well our values match. We refilled our drawers and closet with clothes that are mostly far from the cutting edge of fashion, and we felt rich. We spend so little money on clothing, yet we have so much, enough to keep us warm and comfortable for weeks between launderings, and so many interesting and colorful garments, each one with its history and accumulating memories. We are determined to make the most of what we have, and last night we laughed at some of our sillier attempts to squeeze value out of every garment...but we laughed, too, because it's working, because we are swimming in an abundance of great stuff.
Operation Confuse-a-Bagger
Last spring, I was surprised to learn that I am famous for something that happened 16 years ago. That's what happens when you get mixed up with the KGB, I guess: Your exploits come back to haunt you. I'd had no idea that anyone was still talking about Operation Confuse-a-Bagger, much less that Shawn Knight's retelling of the legend was on YouTube!
Then, just recently, I happened to look at Lynne Powell's blog. She's a good writer and had just won the LJ Idol competition, for which she wrote a number of great essays, like this one about running out . . . and this one about KGB and Operation Confuse-a-Bagger.
Both times, it was a shock to hear/read this story, in which I am a main character, told so differently from the way I recall it! I know, I know, there's "the folk process" and the unreliability of people's long-term memories and the fact that no one person was present for every part of the Operation, and of course Shawn had to trim the story for live performance and Lynne had to work it into the parameters of her competition. I don't mean to say they did a bad job of telling this story. It's just that it actually happened (according to my memory) somewhat differently than they said, and I think they left out (or got wrong) some of the funniest parts!
Obviously, the only way to get this story told right was to tell it myself! I got in touch with KGB and went on the Underground Tour (KGB's annual guided tour of the Carnegie Mellon University campus) to tell the story in a duet with Shawn. It went pretty well, considering that we hadn't, like, rehearsed or anything. We stuck to the part of the story he'd told before but got the facts straight this time. (He very graciously responded to most of my corrections by saying, "You're right; I forgot about that.")
But it's still not the whole story, and that's why I'm writing this.
The KGB
No, no, not that KGB! This one. It's everything Lynne said and more. It's the place for geeks, all kinds of geeks, even people like me who might not seem like geeks because we have some fashion sense and don't know C++ but who always felt like weirdos in our white-bread high schools, to get together and be ourselves and do some weird, silly stuff. It's a big group of friends who take care of each other, with an electronic bulletin board where you can always find someone to take care of your houseplant for the summer (thanks, Mike!) or insist that all your troubles will seem smaller if you come over to his dorm right now for caramel ripple ice cream (thanks, Dale!) or send e-mails to your lonely dad when he has to work late on his 50th birthday (thanks, everybody!). It's a group in which a shy person like myself can become actually sort of popular and get elected to office and find herself giving a weekly extemporaneous oral report in front of 50 people and loving it!
I was recording secretary. KGB refers to this officer as "rec sec" for short. I developed a habit of signing all messages regarding official business "—-'Becca recca secca" and I am known by that name to this day. Once in a while somebody will come up to me at a bus stop or someplace and say, "Hey, aren't you 'Becca? recca secca?" and, even if they are not wearing a trenchcoat or a computing-related T-shirt, I know they must be a komrade.
Here's how I joined KGB: During the Activities Fair held in the first week of my freshman year, I noticed two guys sitting behind a table with a lava lamp on it and a giant banner across the front reading, "DO NOT LICK." I asked, "What is this?" and one of the guys replied, "We're the KGB. Would you like some dental floss?" I took the floss. The other guy said, "Underground Tour. Friday, 8pm. Meet in Gray Matter. Dress inconspicuously." I went on the tour, but before that I found my way to my first meeting by following the mysterious signs that said, simply, "THATAWAY" with an arrow. How could I resist? I joined that day.
Operation Confuse-a-Bagger
Among the many nefarious projects of KGB was an endeavor to reach out to potential members by over-representing the weirdness available to them, should they choose to attend Carnegie Mellon. Several times a year, the university holds an event called Sleeping Bag Weekend, when high school seniors applying to Carnegie Mellon can come and sleep on the floor of a dorm room and spend a whole night and day experiencing campus life. These people are called Baggers. KGB's aim was to Confuse them.
Operation Confuse-a-Bagger took place at least once before I started college. We repeated some of the same strategies that had been used before, as well as making up many of our own.
I offered to host because I didn't have an uncool roommate to cope with; my roommate had moved in with her girlfriend, but since her girlfriend already had a roommate she couldn't change her official address, so Housing didn't assign me a new roommate. My friend Kevin suggested that he move into my room for the Operation and pretend to be my roommate. He brought his mini-fridge, which KGB members stocked entirely with single-serving containers of yogurt.
Part One: February 1992
My Bagger arrived. Her name was Nina. We chatted briefly. Then the door of Kevin's closet opened, revealing a rack of all-black clothing and Shawn, who stepped out, said a quick hello, and departed the room.
"Who was that?"
"Oh, that's Shawn. My roommate rents him the closet floor for study space. You see, Shawn's roommate and his girlfriend can be kind of...loud...so Shawn needed a quiet place to study." I opened the closet door to show Nina the cozy space, complete with cushion, small lamp, pencil jar, and physics textbook.
Then we set off to "meet my roommate and my boyfriend for dinner." We went to the Tartan Grill dining room, and my boyfriend Arch arrived right on time, but my "roommate" did not. We waited and waited, while chatting with Nina about the many features of our university.
Finally I frowned at my watch and said, "Jeez, where is Kevin?"
Nina, puzzled, said, "Your roommate's name is Kevin?"
"Yeah. Where the hell is he? We agreed to meet at 6:30!"
Arch started talking about Kevin's difficulties with electrical engineering lab, dropping in male pronouns at every opportunity, while Nina looked more and more baffled. Finally Kevin appeared, with apologies, and after we'd all gotten our food we explained how my roommate had left and Kevin wasn't getting along so well with his roommate (true) so he'd decided to move into my room. It was not until that very moment that I considered the possibility that my Bagger might not be comfortable with sleeping in the same room as a strange man! (That's what six months in KGB will do to your sense of propriety.) Luckily, she didn't object. Kevin, even when dressed all in black, was not a very threatening presence.
When we got back to my room after dinner, we sat down to do our homework but left the door open. People kept dropping by:
Jody came in, wearing a spiral-shaped pair of the lovely earrings she hand-made from wire. She politely asked if we had any yogurt. We told her to help herself. She ate the yogurt while chatting with the Bagger, then left.
Ann came in and took one m&m from the bowl on my dresser. She hugged Kevin and asked, "Are we still on for tomorrow night?" Kevin said, "Sure. I'll meet you at seven."
Mary came in and took one m&m from the bowl on my dresser and ate it as stealthily as one can. She was wearing an enormous black trenchcoat and a fedora pulled low over her eyes. She approached the Bagger, backed her into a corner, and whispered hoarsely, "Would you like to buy a Q?"
"A what?"
"A Q."
"Uhhh...you mean like the letter Q?"
"Oh yeah. Great price. Check it out." Mary opened her trenchcoat and showed that there was a large Q, cut out of white paper, taped to the inside of it. She wiggled her eyebrows encouragingly.
"Ummm...no thanks."
Mary, crestfallen, fled from the room making sad snuffling sounds.
Shawn came in and took one m&m from the bowl on my dresser. He went into Kevin's closet and shut the door.
Jody came in, wearing triangular wire earrings and murmuring, "Yogurt. I must have yogurt." We told her she was welcome to it. She gulped down the yogurt and raced from the room.
Lynne came in and took one m&m from the bowl on my dresser. She leaned into Kevin's lap, gave him a little kiss, and said, "I'm really looking forward to tomorrow." Kevin said, "Me too. I'll see you at eight."
Mike came in, took one m&m from the bowl on my dresser, and asked if Shawn was in his office. I said yes. Mike knocked on the closet door and then stood in the doorway arguing with Shawn about whether or not the Carnegie Mellon Necrophilia Society could qualify for Student Senate funding. They departed to "examine the evidence more closely." (Actually, they were going to Shawn's room, one floor above, which was serving as headquarters for all komrades involved in the Operation.)
Approximately fourteen people began dancing and head-banging in the hallway directly outside my room, playing Weird Al Yankovic's "Dare to be Stupid" on a boom box.
Jody came in, wearing diamond-shaped wire earrings and looking crazed. She dashed to the refrigerator, grabbed two yogurts, opened them both, and sat down on my bed to get her fix.
The resident assistant asked the dancers to stop playing music in the hallway. They turned it off, and each stopped by my room for one m&m before departing.
Jody's roommate Heather rushed into the room. "You told me you quit!!!" she wailed. Jody, quivering violently, protested, "I can stop anytime I want!" She quivered so hard that a blob of boysenberry yogurt fell onto my blanket. Heather cried, "You see!!! You have a problem!!! You've got to get help!!!" She dragged Jody away. Arch and I watched them go, looked at each other, shrugged, and each started eating a yogurt.
Mary came in, looking completely different as she was now dressed in a skin-tight sequined outfit. She tackled Kevin onto my bed (as I, cleaning up the yogurt, ducked to the floor), and kissed him passionately. "Oh, darling, I can hardly wait until tomorrow!" Kevin replied, "I know, but I just can't see you until nine o'clock." Mary, sighing with longing, paused for an m&m on her way out of the room.
Faye came in and took one m&m from the bowl on my dresser. She and I gossiped enthusiastically, referring to everyone by their computer network user IDs (rs87, fl0m, am4v, kc2z, and the like) instead of their names.
Fred came in and put a small handful of m&m's into his mouth. Kevin and I leapt up and yelled, "What's the matter with you?! How can you be so greedy and rude?!" Under cover of this uproar, Jody tiptoed in, filled her arms with yogurts, and tiptoed out. (She took the yogurts up to Shawn's room to share with everybody.)
It was around this time that I realized I didn't have the textbook I needed for the last homework assignment I had to do that night. I was an architecture major at the time and had left the book in my studio. I invited Nina to walk over with me and see what my studio was like. She agreed very readily—probably glad to get away from the craziness. The moment the elevator doors closed, she asked me, "Is Kevin gay?"
"What? No. Why?"
"Well, I just thought that would explain why Arch is willing to let you share a room with him."
"Oh. No, Arch trusts Kevin. We're all best friends. Anyway, Kevin has enough girlfriends to keep him busy."
"Oh. Yeah, I guess he does."
We walked over to my studio in Doherty Hall, which Nina noted had an ambiance eerily similar to that of the Wheeling, West Virginia, YWCA. In the studio, we found that my classmates were taking a study break and had formed the drawing tables into a catwalk, on which they were strutting to the tune of "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred. (This had absolutely no connection to Operation Confuse-a-Bagger. They just did things like that every once in a while.)
When we got back to my dorm room, the door was ajar, but the lights were off. Huh? I turned on the light and saw
a condom wrapper in the middle of the floor;
another on Kevin's bed, next to my potted plant, which was tipped at an angle with its fronds all askew;
black clothing flung all over the room;
and Kevin lying in my bed, with the covers pulled up to his chest and his shoulders bare, sniveling miserably.
Before I could think what to say, Kevin moaned in his deepest, most miserable voice, "Liz was here. She...she had her way with me...and your plant. I...I'm...sorry! Ohh, why does this keep happening?!"
I didn't even know anyone named Liz.
Nina excused herself to the restroom. I wondered if she would ever come back. I sat down next to Kevin and began saying chipper, reassuring things. He was playing it so well that it took me a minute to feel really certain that this was all part of the game! By the time Nina came back, Kevin was sitting up in bed regaining his self-esteem and eating yogurt, and I was checking my plant for damage. Finding none, I gathered up Kevin's clothing for him. It turned out he was wearing underwear in my bed—thanks, dude.
Well, there were a few other silly shenanigans like the milder ones above, and then we went to sleep. In the morning, while Nina and I were taking showers, Kevin used my computer to create a document and send it to a printer. He told us he needed to pick it up on the way to breakfast. In the computer cluster, he took his document from the print tray and handed it to Nina. It was a certificate that said, I survived Operation Confuse-a-Bagger! Nina laughed and said, "I thought something was up!" She was impressed that we'd gone to so much trouble to make things silly for her.
Over breakfast, Kevin asked me, "Hey, is it okay if I don't move back to my room tonight? I have to write this paper, and—"
Nina interrupted, "You're moving back to your room? You mean, you're not really Becca's roommate?!" She had found that part so thoroughly convincing that she figured Kevin had been living in my room for months!
In fact, as it turned out, while Kevin was struggling with a typical CMU courseload (the kind where every time you can see light at the end of the tunnel, a different professor sticks another tunnel in front of you, so you never do get to relax) and so was I, we discovered that we really liked being roommates. Eventually we decided he might as well stay put for the rest of the semester. This meant we were prepared for
Part Two: April 1992
I received notification that I was to host another Sleeping Bag Weekend just a couple days in advance. Not only was I hosting, but I'd been double-bagged: Two Baggers would be staying with me! KGB knew just what to do.
The only problem was that I was supposed to work that night, 6pm-midnight, at my job in the kitchen of the Tartan Grill. I begged my boss to rearrange the schedule, but the best he could do was find someone to cover my first 4 hours; I still had to come in at 10:00 and stay through closing. Well, at least I wouldn't miss the whole evening.
My Baggers arrived. Their names were Laura and Jennifer. Things proceeded much as before: We chatted; Shawn emerged from the closet; we went to dinner with Arch and Kevin, and Kevin was late on purpose this time, for effect; we entertained evening guests including the yogurt addict and Kevin's many girlfriends. Something new this time was a repeatedly introduced topic of conversation—Which flavor of Kool-Aid best complements which flavor of ramen noodles?—which various groups of people discussed in the style of wine connoisseurs on a very tight budget. We prepared several samples and demanded the Baggers' opinions.
I was disappointed when it was time to put on my Dining Service uniform and head for work. I left the Baggers in the capable hands of Kevin and Arch.
While I was out, the komrades up in Shawn's room hatched a plan that never should have seen the light of day. I'm still not sure what was supposed to be funny about it. Exciting, yes. Possibility of getting several people in a lot of trouble, yes. Funny, no...except in what they did with it after it went wrong.
Drew was a short, skinny, bespectacled guy. Chris was a big guy with an intimidating leather jacket. The Baggers hadn't seen either of them before.
Drew raced into my room, clutching his unzipped pants about his loins, slammed the door behind him, and screamed, "Chris caught me with his girlfriend! Help! Hide me!!!" Kevin prudently stuffed him into Shawn's study space in the closet.
Chris slammed open my door—causing the mirror on the back of the door to fly off and smash against the wall—and bellowed, "Where is he?! I'm gonna kill him!!" He yanked Drew out of the closet, and in the ensuing struggle, a very realistic-looking fake gun fell out of his pocket.
Arch remarked helpfully, "I think that's a real gun!" Chris grabbed it, waved it at Drew, and dragged him away to the stairwell (back to Shawn's room) while the terrified Baggers gaped in horror.
Then the fire alarm went off. (This had nothing to do with KGB. The dorm fire alarms were always going off due to idiots trying to cook Rice-a-Roni in a popcorn popper and that sort of thing.)
Kevin and Arch attempted to lead the Baggers out of the building, but Jennifer was nearly paralyzed with fear, and Laura was shrieking about how outrageous it was that she should be subjected to such behavior and how she was going to call the housemother on us. (She was from a ritzy boarding school.) They finally got into the stairwell at just about the same time as the gang from Shawn's room, who had delayed a bit in hopes that the Baggers wouldn't see all of them together.
Shawn found himself between Ann and Lynne, two of Kevin's "dates", so he flung an arm around each of them and gave the Baggers a big smile. They were Not Amused. Seeing Chris and the obviously-unharmed Drew standing right next to several other players from the evening's escapades made it obvious to Jennifer that she'd been played for a fool. Laura already had figured that out and was furious.
Yet somehow, in the remaining hour or so before I got home, they all pulled together and devised a new plan: Operation Confuse-a-Becca.
I returned to find my dorm floor in silence and my door closed. Had they gone to bed already? I opened the door across carpet covered in broken glass. I had just time to see that Jennifer was pink-faced and shaking, apparently crying, and that Kevin and Arch were looking guilty and worried, before Laura flew at me screaming angry rhetorical questions: "How could you leave us alone in this terrible place? Guns! Fires! Sluts! Why would we even consider coming to school here? What were you thinking, leaving us with these awful men who did nothing to protect us? And you don't even have housemothers?? What kind of place is this? How could your parents let you come here? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!?"
I managed to stammer a few questions about what had happened, and Arch and Kevin attempted some vague explanations—I understood that somebody had threatened somebody with a gun, that the fire alarm had gone off, and that there was some kind of sex scandal—but we all were being drowned out by Laura. She was so upset that I figured this gun thing (the only unusual piece of what I was hearing) must have been serious, and also I could see the broken glass; something terrible must have happened, but what, why, and was it really only part of Confuse-a-Bagger?? I don't handle being yelled at very well, and just as I was reaching the point of collapse, my darling boyfriend brusquely brushed past me and disappeared down the hall, abandoning me!
"Why aren't there any adults on this campus overnight?" Laura demanded in a particularly nasty voice, and I got defensive. I snapped, "We are adults, and what responsible adults"—pointed look at Kevin—"do in an emergency is call the police, and it just so happens we have an on-campus police force available all night!"
I reached for the phone just as it rang.
"Campus Security," said a firm male voice.
"Oh, thank goodness! I just got home, and there's been some sort of—"
"We heard a report of a conflict involving a deadly weapon."
"I don't know exactly what happened, but I think it was a joke, and—"
"A JOKE! I assure you, young lady, violations of the firearms code are no joke, and you will be held liable—"
"But I wasn't even here! It wasn't my idea!" (I felt I was blathering on autopilot while my brain argued, "This sounds like Tom!" and my other brain, or somebody, bleated, "Do you know what'll happen if I say, 'Knock it off, Tom,' and it really is Campus Security?!")
"DO NOT LEAVE YOUR ROOM. An officer will come to question you." Click.
I turned, shaking, tears in my eyes, to see Laura watching me like a snake with its prey, Jennifer turning purple and quivering on what now appeared to be the verge of hysterical laughter, and Kevin inexplicably looking out the window. There was a loud banging on the door. I opened it.
"Campus Security!" said Tom. Behind him, all grinning, were Chris, Drew, Arch, Shawn, Ann, Lynne, and several other komrades. "Operation Confuse-a-Becca!" they chorused. They crowded into my room, celebrating the success of their plan. Somebody paid the Baggers' dues for the next year's KGB membership, should they choose to attend Carnegie Mellon.
The aftermath
I collapsed, and Arch caught me. He had left me in the middle of the crisis in order to run up to Shawn's room and tell everybody to wrap it up quickly because I was not taking it well. He and Kevin helped me clean up the broken glass while everyone else was oblivious with glee over their great joke.
It was a long night. I couldn't stop thinking about what might have happened if someone had gotten hurt in the struggle or if Campus Security really had come to investigate. I couldn't stop hearing the things that had been shouted at me by people who sounded like they meant them. I woke up shaking, over and over again.
Laura had been accepted into Princeton and probably went there.
Jennifer appeared at Carnegie Mellon in the fall but pretended not to recognize me or any other KGB folks.
Nina, the first Bagger, also came to Carnegie Mellon, and she did attend several KGB meetings, with a small group of her art-major friends in tow. It wasn't really her kind of thing, but she gave us the old college try.
It took me a good several months to find the last part of this story amusing. It's not that I can dish it out but can't take it. It's that there were two different kinds of Confusing: the silly, harmless, geeky kind that attempted to portray our campus life as slightly weirder than it actually was, and the kind where people run around a semi-public building tackling each other and waving realistic-looking weapons and WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING??? If the idea of staging an armed conflict for the Baggers had been discussed in advance, I would have objected based on the possible damage to my room, the odds of getting in trouble for it, and the fact that there's just nothing funny about seeing what you believe to be a genuine fight between angry men with a weapon that could kill you by accident. I like to think that I would have objected, too, to any plan that involved anybody getting screamed at as if she were in a lot of trouble because of events that were out of her control. What's funny about that?
In retrospect, though, it's a great story! The best part is the twist, the point when Operation Confuse-a-Bagger ended and Operation Confuse-a-Becca began. That was genius. My friends knew when to quit, how to get two people they'd just met onto their side, and how to turn a failed plan into something exciting to fill the rest of the evening. Pretty cool. I must admit, if I had been there when Chris burst into the room, I probably would've jumped up and called a halt to it right then, which might be the safest course of action but would've totally blown the dramatic tension. So it all worked out for the best.
I still have the potted plant. Like me, she found the experience traumatic in some ways but ultimately came to believe that it had improved her character and given her an interesting story to tell.
Then, just recently, I happened to look at Lynne Powell's blog. She's a good writer and had just won the LJ Idol competition, for which she wrote a number of great essays, like this one about running out . . . and this one about KGB and Operation Confuse-a-Bagger.
Both times, it was a shock to hear/read this story, in which I am a main character, told so differently from the way I recall it! I know, I know, there's "the folk process" and the unreliability of people's long-term memories and the fact that no one person was present for every part of the Operation, and of course Shawn had to trim the story for live performance and Lynne had to work it into the parameters of her competition. I don't mean to say they did a bad job of telling this story. It's just that it actually happened (according to my memory) somewhat differently than they said, and I think they left out (or got wrong) some of the funniest parts!
Obviously, the only way to get this story told right was to tell it myself! I got in touch with KGB and went on the Underground Tour (KGB's annual guided tour of the Carnegie Mellon University campus) to tell the story in a duet with Shawn. It went pretty well, considering that we hadn't, like, rehearsed or anything. We stuck to the part of the story he'd told before but got the facts straight this time. (He very graciously responded to most of my corrections by saying, "You're right; I forgot about that.")
But it's still not the whole story, and that's why I'm writing this.
The KGB
No, no, not that KGB! This one. It's everything Lynne said and more. It's the place for geeks, all kinds of geeks, even people like me who might not seem like geeks because we have some fashion sense and don't know C++ but who always felt like weirdos in our white-bread high schools, to get together and be ourselves and do some weird, silly stuff. It's a big group of friends who take care of each other, with an electronic bulletin board where you can always find someone to take care of your houseplant for the summer (thanks, Mike!) or insist that all your troubles will seem smaller if you come over to his dorm right now for caramel ripple ice cream (thanks, Dale!) or send e-mails to your lonely dad when he has to work late on his 50th birthday (thanks, everybody!). It's a group in which a shy person like myself can become actually sort of popular and get elected to office and find herself giving a weekly extemporaneous oral report in front of 50 people and loving it!
I was recording secretary. KGB refers to this officer as "rec sec" for short. I developed a habit of signing all messages regarding official business "—-'Becca recca secca" and I am known by that name to this day. Once in a while somebody will come up to me at a bus stop or someplace and say, "Hey, aren't you 'Becca? recca secca?" and, even if they are not wearing a trenchcoat or a computing-related T-shirt, I know they must be a komrade.
Here's how I joined KGB: During the Activities Fair held in the first week of my freshman year, I noticed two guys sitting behind a table with a lava lamp on it and a giant banner across the front reading, "DO NOT LICK." I asked, "What is this?" and one of the guys replied, "We're the KGB. Would you like some dental floss?" I took the floss. The other guy said, "Underground Tour. Friday, 8pm. Meet in Gray Matter. Dress inconspicuously." I went on the tour, but before that I found my way to my first meeting by following the mysterious signs that said, simply, "THATAWAY" with an arrow. How could I resist? I joined that day.
Operation Confuse-a-Bagger
Among the many nefarious projects of KGB was an endeavor to reach out to potential members by over-representing the weirdness available to them, should they choose to attend Carnegie Mellon. Several times a year, the university holds an event called Sleeping Bag Weekend, when high school seniors applying to Carnegie Mellon can come and sleep on the floor of a dorm room and spend a whole night and day experiencing campus life. These people are called Baggers. KGB's aim was to Confuse them.
Operation Confuse-a-Bagger took place at least once before I started college. We repeated some of the same strategies that had been used before, as well as making up many of our own.
I offered to host because I didn't have an uncool roommate to cope with; my roommate had moved in with her girlfriend, but since her girlfriend already had a roommate she couldn't change her official address, so Housing didn't assign me a new roommate. My friend Kevin suggested that he move into my room for the Operation and pretend to be my roommate. He brought his mini-fridge, which KGB members stocked entirely with single-serving containers of yogurt.
Part One: February 1992
My Bagger arrived. Her name was Nina. We chatted briefly. Then the door of Kevin's closet opened, revealing a rack of all-black clothing and Shawn, who stepped out, said a quick hello, and departed the room.
"Who was that?"
"Oh, that's Shawn. My roommate rents him the closet floor for study space. You see, Shawn's roommate and his girlfriend can be kind of...loud...so Shawn needed a quiet place to study." I opened the closet door to show Nina the cozy space, complete with cushion, small lamp, pencil jar, and physics textbook.
Then we set off to "meet my roommate and my boyfriend for dinner." We went to the Tartan Grill dining room, and my boyfriend Arch arrived right on time, but my "roommate" did not. We waited and waited, while chatting with Nina about the many features of our university.
Finally I frowned at my watch and said, "Jeez, where is Kevin?"
Nina, puzzled, said, "Your roommate's name is Kevin?"
"Yeah. Where the hell is he? We agreed to meet at 6:30!"
Arch started talking about Kevin's difficulties with electrical engineering lab, dropping in male pronouns at every opportunity, while Nina looked more and more baffled. Finally Kevin appeared, with apologies, and after we'd all gotten our food we explained how my roommate had left and Kevin wasn't getting along so well with his roommate (true) so he'd decided to move into my room. It was not until that very moment that I considered the possibility that my Bagger might not be comfortable with sleeping in the same room as a strange man! (That's what six months in KGB will do to your sense of propriety.) Luckily, she didn't object. Kevin, even when dressed all in black, was not a very threatening presence.
When we got back to my room after dinner, we sat down to do our homework but left the door open. People kept dropping by:
Jody came in, wearing a spiral-shaped pair of the lovely earrings she hand-made from wire. She politely asked if we had any yogurt. We told her to help herself. She ate the yogurt while chatting with the Bagger, then left.
Ann came in and took one m&m from the bowl on my dresser. She hugged Kevin and asked, "Are we still on for tomorrow night?" Kevin said, "Sure. I'll meet you at seven."
Mary came in and took one m&m from the bowl on my dresser and ate it as stealthily as one can. She was wearing an enormous black trenchcoat and a fedora pulled low over her eyes. She approached the Bagger, backed her into a corner, and whispered hoarsely, "Would you like to buy a Q?"
"A what?"
"A Q."
"Uhhh...you mean like the letter Q?"
"Oh yeah. Great price. Check it out." Mary opened her trenchcoat and showed that there was a large Q, cut out of white paper, taped to the inside of it. She wiggled her eyebrows encouragingly.
"Ummm...no thanks."
Mary, crestfallen, fled from the room making sad snuffling sounds.
Shawn came in and took one m&m from the bowl on my dresser. He went into Kevin's closet and shut the door.
Jody came in, wearing triangular wire earrings and murmuring, "Yogurt. I must have yogurt." We told her she was welcome to it. She gulped down the yogurt and raced from the room.
Lynne came in and took one m&m from the bowl on my dresser. She leaned into Kevin's lap, gave him a little kiss, and said, "I'm really looking forward to tomorrow." Kevin said, "Me too. I'll see you at eight."
Mike came in, took one m&m from the bowl on my dresser, and asked if Shawn was in his office. I said yes. Mike knocked on the closet door and then stood in the doorway arguing with Shawn about whether or not the Carnegie Mellon Necrophilia Society could qualify for Student Senate funding. They departed to "examine the evidence more closely." (Actually, they were going to Shawn's room, one floor above, which was serving as headquarters for all komrades involved in the Operation.)
Approximately fourteen people began dancing and head-banging in the hallway directly outside my room, playing Weird Al Yankovic's "Dare to be Stupid" on a boom box.
Jody came in, wearing diamond-shaped wire earrings and looking crazed. She dashed to the refrigerator, grabbed two yogurts, opened them both, and sat down on my bed to get her fix.
The resident assistant asked the dancers to stop playing music in the hallway. They turned it off, and each stopped by my room for one m&m before departing.
Jody's roommate Heather rushed into the room. "You told me you quit!!!" she wailed. Jody, quivering violently, protested, "I can stop anytime I want!" She quivered so hard that a blob of boysenberry yogurt fell onto my blanket. Heather cried, "You see!!! You have a problem!!! You've got to get help!!!" She dragged Jody away. Arch and I watched them go, looked at each other, shrugged, and each started eating a yogurt.
Mary came in, looking completely different as she was now dressed in a skin-tight sequined outfit. She tackled Kevin onto my bed (as I, cleaning up the yogurt, ducked to the floor), and kissed him passionately. "Oh, darling, I can hardly wait until tomorrow!" Kevin replied, "I know, but I just can't see you until nine o'clock." Mary, sighing with longing, paused for an m&m on her way out of the room.
Faye came in and took one m&m from the bowl on my dresser. She and I gossiped enthusiastically, referring to everyone by their computer network user IDs (rs87, fl0m, am4v, kc2z, and the like) instead of their names.
Fred came in and put a small handful of m&m's into his mouth. Kevin and I leapt up and yelled, "What's the matter with you?! How can you be so greedy and rude?!" Under cover of this uproar, Jody tiptoed in, filled her arms with yogurts, and tiptoed out. (She took the yogurts up to Shawn's room to share with everybody.)
It was around this time that I realized I didn't have the textbook I needed for the last homework assignment I had to do that night. I was an architecture major at the time and had left the book in my studio. I invited Nina to walk over with me and see what my studio was like. She agreed very readily—probably glad to get away from the craziness. The moment the elevator doors closed, she asked me, "Is Kevin gay?"
"What? No. Why?"
"Well, I just thought that would explain why Arch is willing to let you share a room with him."
"Oh. No, Arch trusts Kevin. We're all best friends. Anyway, Kevin has enough girlfriends to keep him busy."
"Oh. Yeah, I guess he does."
We walked over to my studio in Doherty Hall, which Nina noted had an ambiance eerily similar to that of the Wheeling, West Virginia, YWCA. In the studio, we found that my classmates were taking a study break and had formed the drawing tables into a catwalk, on which they were strutting to the tune of "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred. (This had absolutely no connection to Operation Confuse-a-Bagger. They just did things like that every once in a while.)
When we got back to my dorm room, the door was ajar, but the lights were off. Huh? I turned on the light and saw
a condom wrapper in the middle of the floor;
another on Kevin's bed, next to my potted plant, which was tipped at an angle with its fronds all askew;
black clothing flung all over the room;
and Kevin lying in my bed, with the covers pulled up to his chest and his shoulders bare, sniveling miserably.
Before I could think what to say, Kevin moaned in his deepest, most miserable voice, "Liz was here. She...she had her way with me...and your plant. I...I'm...sorry! Ohh, why does this keep happening?!"
I didn't even know anyone named Liz.
Nina excused herself to the restroom. I wondered if she would ever come back. I sat down next to Kevin and began saying chipper, reassuring things. He was playing it so well that it took me a minute to feel really certain that this was all part of the game! By the time Nina came back, Kevin was sitting up in bed regaining his self-esteem and eating yogurt, and I was checking my plant for damage. Finding none, I gathered up Kevin's clothing for him. It turned out he was wearing underwear in my bed—thanks, dude.
Well, there were a few other silly shenanigans like the milder ones above, and then we went to sleep. In the morning, while Nina and I were taking showers, Kevin used my computer to create a document and send it to a printer. He told us he needed to pick it up on the way to breakfast. In the computer cluster, he took his document from the print tray and handed it to Nina. It was a certificate that said, I survived Operation Confuse-a-Bagger! Nina laughed and said, "I thought something was up!" She was impressed that we'd gone to so much trouble to make things silly for her.
Over breakfast, Kevin asked me, "Hey, is it okay if I don't move back to my room tonight? I have to write this paper, and—"
Nina interrupted, "You're moving back to your room? You mean, you're not really Becca's roommate?!" She had found that part so thoroughly convincing that she figured Kevin had been living in my room for months!
In fact, as it turned out, while Kevin was struggling with a typical CMU courseload (the kind where every time you can see light at the end of the tunnel, a different professor sticks another tunnel in front of you, so you never do get to relax) and so was I, we discovered that we really liked being roommates. Eventually we decided he might as well stay put for the rest of the semester. This meant we were prepared for
Part Two: April 1992
I received notification that I was to host another Sleeping Bag Weekend just a couple days in advance. Not only was I hosting, but I'd been double-bagged: Two Baggers would be staying with me! KGB knew just what to do.
The only problem was that I was supposed to work that night, 6pm-midnight, at my job in the kitchen of the Tartan Grill. I begged my boss to rearrange the schedule, but the best he could do was find someone to cover my first 4 hours; I still had to come in at 10:00 and stay through closing. Well, at least I wouldn't miss the whole evening.
My Baggers arrived. Their names were Laura and Jennifer. Things proceeded much as before: We chatted; Shawn emerged from the closet; we went to dinner with Arch and Kevin, and Kevin was late on purpose this time, for effect; we entertained evening guests including the yogurt addict and Kevin's many girlfriends. Something new this time was a repeatedly introduced topic of conversation—Which flavor of Kool-Aid best complements which flavor of ramen noodles?—which various groups of people discussed in the style of wine connoisseurs on a very tight budget. We prepared several samples and demanded the Baggers' opinions.
I was disappointed when it was time to put on my Dining Service uniform and head for work. I left the Baggers in the capable hands of Kevin and Arch.
While I was out, the komrades up in Shawn's room hatched a plan that never should have seen the light of day. I'm still not sure what was supposed to be funny about it. Exciting, yes. Possibility of getting several people in a lot of trouble, yes. Funny, no...except in what they did with it after it went wrong.
Drew was a short, skinny, bespectacled guy. Chris was a big guy with an intimidating leather jacket. The Baggers hadn't seen either of them before.
Drew raced into my room, clutching his unzipped pants about his loins, slammed the door behind him, and screamed, "Chris caught me with his girlfriend! Help! Hide me!!!" Kevin prudently stuffed him into Shawn's study space in the closet.
Chris slammed open my door—causing the mirror on the back of the door to fly off and smash against the wall—and bellowed, "Where is he?! I'm gonna kill him!!" He yanked Drew out of the closet, and in the ensuing struggle, a very realistic-looking fake gun fell out of his pocket.
Arch remarked helpfully, "I think that's a real gun!" Chris grabbed it, waved it at Drew, and dragged him away to the stairwell (back to Shawn's room) while the terrified Baggers gaped in horror.
Then the fire alarm went off. (This had nothing to do with KGB. The dorm fire alarms were always going off due to idiots trying to cook Rice-a-Roni in a popcorn popper and that sort of thing.)
Kevin and Arch attempted to lead the Baggers out of the building, but Jennifer was nearly paralyzed with fear, and Laura was shrieking about how outrageous it was that she should be subjected to such behavior and how she was going to call the housemother on us. (She was from a ritzy boarding school.) They finally got into the stairwell at just about the same time as the gang from Shawn's room, who had delayed a bit in hopes that the Baggers wouldn't see all of them together.
Shawn found himself between Ann and Lynne, two of Kevin's "dates", so he flung an arm around each of them and gave the Baggers a big smile. They were Not Amused. Seeing Chris and the obviously-unharmed Drew standing right next to several other players from the evening's escapades made it obvious to Jennifer that she'd been played for a fool. Laura already had figured that out and was furious.
Yet somehow, in the remaining hour or so before I got home, they all pulled together and devised a new plan: Operation Confuse-a-Becca.
I returned to find my dorm floor in silence and my door closed. Had they gone to bed already? I opened the door across carpet covered in broken glass. I had just time to see that Jennifer was pink-faced and shaking, apparently crying, and that Kevin and Arch were looking guilty and worried, before Laura flew at me screaming angry rhetorical questions: "How could you leave us alone in this terrible place? Guns! Fires! Sluts! Why would we even consider coming to school here? What were you thinking, leaving us with these awful men who did nothing to protect us? And you don't even have housemothers?? What kind of place is this? How could your parents let you come here? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?!?"
I managed to stammer a few questions about what had happened, and Arch and Kevin attempted some vague explanations—I understood that somebody had threatened somebody with a gun, that the fire alarm had gone off, and that there was some kind of sex scandal—but we all were being drowned out by Laura. She was so upset that I figured this gun thing (the only unusual piece of what I was hearing) must have been serious, and also I could see the broken glass; something terrible must have happened, but what, why, and was it really only part of Confuse-a-Bagger?? I don't handle being yelled at very well, and just as I was reaching the point of collapse, my darling boyfriend brusquely brushed past me and disappeared down the hall, abandoning me!
"Why aren't there any adults on this campus overnight?" Laura demanded in a particularly nasty voice, and I got defensive. I snapped, "We are adults, and what responsible adults"—pointed look at Kevin—"do in an emergency is call the police, and it just so happens we have an on-campus police force available all night!"
I reached for the phone just as it rang.
"Campus Security," said a firm male voice.
"Oh, thank goodness! I just got home, and there's been some sort of—"
"We heard a report of a conflict involving a deadly weapon."
"I don't know exactly what happened, but I think it was a joke, and—"
"A JOKE! I assure you, young lady, violations of the firearms code are no joke, and you will be held liable—"
"But I wasn't even here! It wasn't my idea!" (I felt I was blathering on autopilot while my brain argued, "This sounds like Tom!" and my other brain, or somebody, bleated, "Do you know what'll happen if I say, 'Knock it off, Tom,' and it really is Campus Security?!")
"DO NOT LEAVE YOUR ROOM. An officer will come to question you." Click.
I turned, shaking, tears in my eyes, to see Laura watching me like a snake with its prey, Jennifer turning purple and quivering on what now appeared to be the verge of hysterical laughter, and Kevin inexplicably looking out the window. There was a loud banging on the door. I opened it.
"Campus Security!" said Tom. Behind him, all grinning, were Chris, Drew, Arch, Shawn, Ann, Lynne, and several other komrades. "Operation Confuse-a-Becca!" they chorused. They crowded into my room, celebrating the success of their plan. Somebody paid the Baggers' dues for the next year's KGB membership, should they choose to attend Carnegie Mellon.
The aftermath
I collapsed, and Arch caught me. He had left me in the middle of the crisis in order to run up to Shawn's room and tell everybody to wrap it up quickly because I was not taking it well. He and Kevin helped me clean up the broken glass while everyone else was oblivious with glee over their great joke.
It was a long night. I couldn't stop thinking about what might have happened if someone had gotten hurt in the struggle or if Campus Security really had come to investigate. I couldn't stop hearing the things that had been shouted at me by people who sounded like they meant them. I woke up shaking, over and over again.
Laura had been accepted into Princeton and probably went there.
Jennifer appeared at Carnegie Mellon in the fall but pretended not to recognize me or any other KGB folks.
Nina, the first Bagger, also came to Carnegie Mellon, and she did attend several KGB meetings, with a small group of her art-major friends in tow. It wasn't really her kind of thing, but she gave us the old college try.
It took me a good several months to find the last part of this story amusing. It's not that I can dish it out but can't take it. It's that there were two different kinds of Confusing: the silly, harmless, geeky kind that attempted to portray our campus life as slightly weirder than it actually was, and the kind where people run around a semi-public building tackling each other and waving realistic-looking weapons and WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING??? If the idea of staging an armed conflict for the Baggers had been discussed in advance, I would have objected based on the possible damage to my room, the odds of getting in trouble for it, and the fact that there's just nothing funny about seeing what you believe to be a genuine fight between angry men with a weapon that could kill you by accident. I like to think that I would have objected, too, to any plan that involved anybody getting screamed at as if she were in a lot of trouble because of events that were out of her control. What's funny about that?
In retrospect, though, it's a great story! The best part is the twist, the point when Operation Confuse-a-Bagger ended and Operation Confuse-a-Becca began. That was genius. My friends knew when to quit, how to get two people they'd just met onto their side, and how to turn a failed plan into something exciting to fill the rest of the evening. Pretty cool. I must admit, if I had been there when Chris burst into the room, I probably would've jumped up and called a halt to it right then, which might be the safest course of action but would've totally blown the dramatic tension. So it all worked out for the best.
I still have the potted plant. Like me, she found the experience traumatic in some ways but ultimately came to believe that it had improved her character and given her an interesting story to tell.
links
Check the facts behind those negative campaign ads! This site is like Snopes for politics.
Hey, I never knew this before: Some spiders are indoor spiders who long ago evolved to live inside buildings!
Curvy-hipped women are smarter and have smarter children.
A man whose parents lived with and loved another couple for part of his childhood writes about the experience. I think the most interesting thing about this is that he says the divorce was harder on him than the cohabiting.
Orson Scott Card wrote this great article about walkable neighborhoods, public transit, and ways to improve retail operations. He wrote a lot of the things I've been meaning to write (and now don't have to get around to!) as well as some I hadn't thought of yet. He also makes me grateful for Pittsburgh, where those "little downtowns" are a reality.
Interesting facts about the countries that legalized homosexual civil unions in the early 1990s: Rates of heterosexual marriage increased, rates of heterosexual divorce decreased, rates of sexually transmitted infection decreased, and rates of unmarried childbearing increased at a slower pace than before civil unions became available.
A great reason not to get married, whatever your sexual orientation: In Massachusetts, you can be required to pay alimony to your spouse's ex-spouse!
This local mom has an almost paperless home because of the many reusable products she makes and sells. I really like the looks of her school-gear bags (intended to replace those horrible zippered vinyl ones whose scratchy seams always split at the worst possible moment), and the unicorn-print diapers are sooo cute!
Here's a place to buy reusable sandwich wrappers that are not made of vinyl.
Walk Score uses an address to calculate the "walkability" of the neighborhood—what's within walking distance. Our home scores 88 out of 100. My childhood home scores 23.
The daughter of feminist author Alice Walker writes about how her mother's stances affected her life as a child and now as a mother.
Interesting thoughts on cat-to-human translation and Emotional Dynamic Range.
Here's an old house turned into an eye-popping art project.
Hey, I never knew this before: Some spiders are indoor spiders who long ago evolved to live inside buildings!
Curvy-hipped women are smarter and have smarter children.
A man whose parents lived with and loved another couple for part of his childhood writes about the experience. I think the most interesting thing about this is that he says the divorce was harder on him than the cohabiting.
Orson Scott Card wrote this great article about walkable neighborhoods, public transit, and ways to improve retail operations. He wrote a lot of the things I've been meaning to write (and now don't have to get around to!) as well as some I hadn't thought of yet. He also makes me grateful for Pittsburgh, where those "little downtowns" are a reality.
Interesting facts about the countries that legalized homosexual civil unions in the early 1990s: Rates of heterosexual marriage increased, rates of heterosexual divorce decreased, rates of sexually transmitted infection decreased, and rates of unmarried childbearing increased at a slower pace than before civil unions became available.
A great reason not to get married, whatever your sexual orientation: In Massachusetts, you can be required to pay alimony to your spouse's ex-spouse!
This local mom has an almost paperless home because of the many reusable products she makes and sells. I really like the looks of her school-gear bags (intended to replace those horrible zippered vinyl ones whose scratchy seams always split at the worst possible moment), and the unicorn-print diapers are sooo cute!
Here's a place to buy reusable sandwich wrappers that are not made of vinyl.
Walk Score uses an address to calculate the "walkability" of the neighborhood—what's within walking distance. Our home scores 88 out of 100. My childhood home scores 23.
The daughter of feminist author Alice Walker writes about how her mother's stances affected her life as a child and now as a mother.
Interesting thoughts on cat-to-human translation and Emotional Dynamic Range.
Here's an old house turned into an eye-popping art project.
The Way I Usually Do It
A couple of weeks ago, we were making one of our family's favorite dinners: beans, guacamole, diced tomato, and chips. As usual, Daniel was Mexicanating the beans while I made the guacamole. Nicholas decided, for the first time, that he wanted to help with the guacamole instead of the beans. I showed him how I remove the stem from an avocado, put the point of the knife into the stem hole, cut all the way around, and then twist to separate the two halves. I handed him one half and used the other to demonstrate how to squish the avocado pulp into the mixing bowl.
Nicholas said, "Well. Mom. This is the way I usually do it." He grabbed an uncut avocado and began sawing at it with the paring knife, narrating in an instructive tone.
My first instinct was to laugh. I mean, the kid is three-and-a-half years old and had never cut an avocado before in his life. What does he know about it? How can he claim he "usually" does this? His method clearly wasn't working; the knife wasn't penetrating the avocado at all.
But I know how nice it is to feel competent, to know how to do things and how to explain them. I thought about how much of my writing is about The Way I Usually Do It and how good I feel when somebody tries my technique and it works for them. I know how it feels to be in a situation where other people seem to know everything about tasks you've never attempted, and you just want to feel like you can do things, too—and for a young child, the whole world is like that!
So I said, "Oh, that's a different way. Okay, you cut that one, and I will get this one out of the peel." Nicholas replied, very cheerfully, "That's teamwork!"
When I was done with my avocado, Nicholas was still sawing at his and had barely scratched the surface of the peel. I suggested plunging in the tip of the knife. I suggested that a serrated knife would be better for that type of cutting. "No no no! This is the way I usually do it!...but, Mama, could you get it started for me, please?" I made a cut in the place he was trying to cut, left the knife in it, and gave it back to him. (Then I got another knife and cut another avocado my way. We were making large batches of guacamole and beans to last for several meals.) Soon he had removed the wide end of the avocado and squished its contents into the bowl. He then picked up the remaining 80% or so of the avocado and tried to squish it.
At this point I realized that my avocado-opening method wouldn't have worked for Nicholas if he'd tried it. He can't hold an avocado in one hand and the knife in the other! Just lifting an avocado in two hands is an ordeal when your hands are that small. There was no way he could squeeze hard enough to get it out of the peel. He looked daunted for about two seconds, then announced, "This is the way I usually do it." as he rolled the avocado against the cutting board, standing tiptoe on his chair to lean his weight on it, to loosen it from the peel.
One of the most wonderful things about having a child is being able to teach him how we do things, making him one of our family by teaching him our ways. But it's wonderful, too, to see him figure out things for himself, especially when it spares him the frustration of not being able to do it my way. If I'd laughed at him and told him he didn't know how to do it...he might have believed me and stopped trying.
Last night, Nicholas and I were playing Uno ("ages 7 and up", ha!) and I played a Reverse card, which causes the direction of play to change: If you were taking turns clockwise, now you go counter-clockwise. With two players, that doesn't have any effect. I explained this to Nicholas. He said, "Well. What I usually do about that is, you and me reverse. Get up. I'll be you, and you'll be me. No, leave your cards there." We switched seats and switched hands of cards, and since I had played the Reverse, now it was "his" turn, which is to say my turn.
What a great idea! It turned "Ho hum, this would be an interesting play if we had a bigger group, but for you and me it might as well be a number card" into an exciting upheaval of the game play. Later in the game, when I'd had to draw half the deck into my hand because of a shortage of red cards, I was able to play a Reverse and stick my opponent with that huge hand! (I'm not one of those parents who plays to lose out of concern for my child's fragile ego.)
When I think back to the many hot summer afternoons I spent playing game after game of two-player Uno with my brother, I wonder why we never thought of using Reverse this way! I guess it's because we didn't have Nicholas around to tell us the way he usually does it.
Nicholas said, "Well. Mom. This is the way I usually do it." He grabbed an uncut avocado and began sawing at it with the paring knife, narrating in an instructive tone.
My first instinct was to laugh. I mean, the kid is three-and-a-half years old and had never cut an avocado before in his life. What does he know about it? How can he claim he "usually" does this? His method clearly wasn't working; the knife wasn't penetrating the avocado at all.
But I know how nice it is to feel competent, to know how to do things and how to explain them. I thought about how much of my writing is about The Way I Usually Do It and how good I feel when somebody tries my technique and it works for them. I know how it feels to be in a situation where other people seem to know everything about tasks you've never attempted, and you just want to feel like you can do things, too—and for a young child, the whole world is like that!
So I said, "Oh, that's a different way. Okay, you cut that one, and I will get this one out of the peel." Nicholas replied, very cheerfully, "That's teamwork!"
When I was done with my avocado, Nicholas was still sawing at his and had barely scratched the surface of the peel. I suggested plunging in the tip of the knife. I suggested that a serrated knife would be better for that type of cutting. "No no no! This is the way I usually do it!...but, Mama, could you get it started for me, please?" I made a cut in the place he was trying to cut, left the knife in it, and gave it back to him. (Then I got another knife and cut another avocado my way. We were making large batches of guacamole and beans to last for several meals.) Soon he had removed the wide end of the avocado and squished its contents into the bowl. He then picked up the remaining 80% or so of the avocado and tried to squish it.
At this point I realized that my avocado-opening method wouldn't have worked for Nicholas if he'd tried it. He can't hold an avocado in one hand and the knife in the other! Just lifting an avocado in two hands is an ordeal when your hands are that small. There was no way he could squeeze hard enough to get it out of the peel. He looked daunted for about two seconds, then announced, "This is the way I usually do it." as he rolled the avocado against the cutting board, standing tiptoe on his chair to lean his weight on it, to loosen it from the peel.
One of the most wonderful things about having a child is being able to teach him how we do things, making him one of our family by teaching him our ways. But it's wonderful, too, to see him figure out things for himself, especially when it spares him the frustration of not being able to do it my way. If I'd laughed at him and told him he didn't know how to do it...he might have believed me and stopped trying.
Last night, Nicholas and I were playing Uno ("ages 7 and up", ha!) and I played a Reverse card, which causes the direction of play to change: If you were taking turns clockwise, now you go counter-clockwise. With two players, that doesn't have any effect. I explained this to Nicholas. He said, "Well. What I usually do about that is, you and me reverse. Get up. I'll be you, and you'll be me. No, leave your cards there." We switched seats and switched hands of cards, and since I had played the Reverse, now it was "his" turn, which is to say my turn.
What a great idea! It turned "Ho hum, this would be an interesting play if we had a bigger group, but for you and me it might as well be a number card" into an exciting upheaval of the game play. Later in the game, when I'd had to draw half the deck into my hand because of a shortage of red cards, I was able to play a Reverse and stick my opponent with that huge hand! (I'm not one of those parents who plays to lose out of concern for my child's fragile ego.)
When I think back to the many hot summer afternoons I spent playing game after game of two-player Uno with my brother, I wonder why we never thought of using Reverse this way! I guess it's because we didn't have Nicholas around to tell us the way he usually does it.
Community Organizer vs. CEO
Sarah Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention mocked Barack Obama's career as a "community organizer" and said that what America needs is a president with "executive experience" who can act as our CEO. She got a lot of cheers from the party delegates. Probably a lot of them are (or want to be) CEOs themselves and like the idea of somebody like themselves being in charge.
To me, though, those words pressed completely different buttons than the Republicans intended. To me, a CEO is someone who makes the occasional important decision but delegates all the hard work to underlings who never get much credit, someone who plays golf a lot and eats fancy dinners on an expense account, someone who runs the business into the ground and then escapes with lots of money while other people clean up the mess. To me, "executive" means "I think I'm better than you because I wear a tie and never clean my own toilet."
That's not the kind of president I want! That's very much the kind of president we've had for the last eight years, and it looks like he's going to get away with the golden parachute, instead of being shipped to Iraq to accomplish his damn mission already.
A CEO has two top priorities: to crush the competition, and to maximize shareholder profit. I believe that the United States can be a great country without crushing anybody; in fact, we'll be a better country if we think in terms of setting a good example and encouraging other countries to follow, instead of being paranoid that other countries will conquer us if we don't conquer them first. As for the shareholders, the Republicans like to make it sound as if all Americans will benefit from their policies, but the reality is clear: When Sarah Palin said Barack Obama would raise your taxes, the "you" she was talking about is the richest 5%-25% of taxpayers. Those are the shareholders they serve, whose profit they want to maximize at the expense of the rest of us.
Some people have suggested that sneering at the "community organizer" is a Republican strategy to be racist and/or classist without coming out and saying so. Perhaps. But I think it's less a matter of race or class than of attitude toward the people. The Republicans want us to fear the outside world and depend on them for protection. (I think it's hilarious that Rudy Giuliani, notorious for mentioning 9/11 at every possible opportunity, criticized the Democrats for not mentioning 9/11 enough at their convention!) The Democrats have noticed that, during our eight years of being defensive and offensive, we've been letting our country fall apart on the inside, and they want to get it back together.
To me, a "community organizer" is exactly what we need to get Americans back to feeling like part of a community and getting things organized, instead of spiraling out of control and blaming each other. I really like the idea of a president whose instinctive approach to problems is to sit down and listen to everybody's perspective and then motivate everybody to stand up and work together to do the right thing.
To me, though, those words pressed completely different buttons than the Republicans intended. To me, a CEO is someone who makes the occasional important decision but delegates all the hard work to underlings who never get much credit, someone who plays golf a lot and eats fancy dinners on an expense account, someone who runs the business into the ground and then escapes with lots of money while other people clean up the mess. To me, "executive" means "I think I'm better than you because I wear a tie and never clean my own toilet."
That's not the kind of president I want! That's very much the kind of president we've had for the last eight years, and it looks like he's going to get away with the golden parachute, instead of being shipped to Iraq to accomplish his damn mission already.
A CEO has two top priorities: to crush the competition, and to maximize shareholder profit. I believe that the United States can be a great country without crushing anybody; in fact, we'll be a better country if we think in terms of setting a good example and encouraging other countries to follow, instead of being paranoid that other countries will conquer us if we don't conquer them first. As for the shareholders, the Republicans like to make it sound as if all Americans will benefit from their policies, but the reality is clear: When Sarah Palin said Barack Obama would raise your taxes, the "you" she was talking about is the richest 5%-25% of taxpayers. Those are the shareholders they serve, whose profit they want to maximize at the expense of the rest of us.
Some people have suggested that sneering at the "community organizer" is a Republican strategy to be racist and/or classist without coming out and saying so. Perhaps. But I think it's less a matter of race or class than of attitude toward the people. The Republicans want us to fear the outside world and depend on them for protection. (I think it's hilarious that Rudy Giuliani, notorious for mentioning 9/11 at every possible opportunity, criticized the Democrats for not mentioning 9/11 enough at their convention!) The Democrats have noticed that, during our eight years of being defensive and offensive, we've been letting our country fall apart on the inside, and they want to get it back together.
To me, a "community organizer" is exactly what we need to get Americans back to feeling like part of a community and getting things organized, instead of spiraling out of control and blaming each other. I really like the idea of a president whose instinctive approach to problems is to sit down and listen to everybody's perspective and then motivate everybody to stand up and work together to do the right thing.
John McCain is committing adultery.
"Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman is committing adultery."
—Jesus Christ, as quoted in Mark 10:11 and Luke 16:18
I'm just saying. By having divorced Carol and married Cindy, John McCain committed adultery and has lived in an adulterous relationship for 28 years now. This may not be adultery as your typical American defines it, but it is adultery according to Jesus Christ.
In addition, McCain had several extramarital affairs during his marriage to Carol and began his relationship with Cindy while still married to Carol. That is adultery by anybody's definition.
It's true that McCain has said the failure of his first marriage was the biggest moral failure of his life and that he's on pretty good terms with Carol. He could be worse.
But he also said in the above forum, "For me as a Christian, [marriage] is a sacred union. God's in the mix." This indicates his intention to follow the teachings of Jesus. How, then, can he believe that his current adulterous union is acceptable?
This isn't the reason I'm not voting for John McCain. He and I disagree on nearly all the issues of American government that I think are far more important than his sexual behavior.
However, it seems to me that just ten years ago, there were a lot of Americans who thought it was very, very important to have a president who did not commit adultery. This year, a lot of Americans have been saying John Edwards will never again be able to run for office because he committed adultery. Clearly, there are people to whom this is a deciding issue.
Therefore, I say: If you believe that an adulterer is unfit to serve as President of the United States, do not vote for John McCain. If you believe that McCain's adultery no longer matters because he is now (as far as we know) in an exclusive relationship with Cindy, compare the behavior of this self-professed Christian to the teachings of Jesus Christ.
—Jesus Christ, as quoted in Mark 10:11 and Luke 16:18
I'm just saying. By having divorced Carol and married Cindy, John McCain committed adultery and has lived in an adulterous relationship for 28 years now. This may not be adultery as your typical American defines it, but it is adultery according to Jesus Christ.
In addition, McCain had several extramarital affairs during his marriage to Carol and began his relationship with Cindy while still married to Carol. That is adultery by anybody's definition.
It's true that McCain has said the failure of his first marriage was the biggest moral failure of his life and that he's on pretty good terms with Carol. He could be worse.
But he also said in the above forum, "For me as a Christian, [marriage] is a sacred union. God's in the mix." This indicates his intention to follow the teachings of Jesus. How, then, can he believe that his current adulterous union is acceptable?
This isn't the reason I'm not voting for John McCain. He and I disagree on nearly all the issues of American government that I think are far more important than his sexual behavior.
However, it seems to me that just ten years ago, there were a lot of Americans who thought it was very, very important to have a president who did not commit adultery. This year, a lot of Americans have been saying John Edwards will never again be able to run for office because he committed adultery. Clearly, there are people to whom this is a deciding issue.
Therefore, I say: If you believe that an adulterer is unfit to serve as President of the United States, do not vote for John McCain. If you believe that McCain's adultery no longer matters because he is now (as far as we know) in an exclusive relationship with Cindy, compare the behavior of this self-professed Christian to the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Show. No. Fear.
A few years ago, my mom and I saw a toddler having a tantrum about leaving an outdoor tourist attraction at closing time. She wanted to walk—NO she wanted to be carried—NO she wanted to ride in the wagon—NO she wanted to shriek and thrash in the gravel!!! This went on and on and on while her parents hovered over her, saying tentatively, "Honey? Wouldn't you like to maybe ride in the wagon?" As we passed, my mom said to them, cheerfully but firmly, "Show. No. Fear." She told me she knew it wouldn't be helpful to get more involved than that, but she hoped that that phrase, which had been her mantra in dealing with toddlers, would help them take charge.
Now that I have a young child myself, I'm understanding better what she meant: When he freaks out, I feel afraid—that he'll hurt himself, that he'll hurt me, that people who see us will think I'm a bad parent, and most of all that if I force him to do something I'll damage him—but showing him my fear won't help either of us. He needs me to keep myself together and show that I know what to do in this situation that's freaking him. He also needs me to control my fear because fear leads to anger, and my getting angry isn't going to help, either.
As a developmental psychology major, I learned about the four styles of parenting. I was raised by authoritative parents. I remember many, many times when they firmly directed me to do something I did not want to do, but within minutes or hours or days I realized that their judgment was better than mine. (That's not to say they were always right, particularly as I got older, but they were usually right, which led me to trust them.)
It's unfortunate that the researchers who named the parenting styles chose two terms that sound so similar, because there is a big difference between authoritARIAN and authoritATIVE. The authoritarian attitude is, "You must bow to my will always, because I said so, or else I will make you regret it." The authoritative is, "Sometimes it is necessary that you do what I say, even if you'd rather not, because my wisdom and experience give me better judgment, and in time you'll see that I am right."
Fear has its place. I am afraid that my child or I might get hit by a car, and that's a reasonable fear when we're walking near traffic. While I don't want my child to be crippled by fear in his life in general, I do want him to be afraid of things that are truly dangerous. I'm teaching him to fear cars but also to manage that fear the way I do: by being careful to stay out of the way of cars, following pedestrian safety rules, and trying to interpret the intentions of drivers. I've allowed him much more opportunity to walk (rather than be carried or strollered) near traffic, from an earlier age than many kids these days, to help him develop these skills and build them right into his understanding of how to get around in our world.
I often hear, in discussions of positive discipline, that people don't understand how a parent can never spank a child because you just have to spank in certain situations—and the most commonly cited example is a child running out into traffic. After rescuing your precious child from his brush with death, they say, you must spank him to teach him never to do that again. This is a classic example of showing fear in the the wrong way. The parent's fear for the child's safety is escalated into anger ("I told you not to do that! How dare you disobey me? I'm your mother!") and the child learns not to fear cars but to fear the parent and the pain she inflicts.
Well, one day Nicholas ran out into traffic: He jogged confidently into a crosswalk as soon as the light changed, not having noticed the driver talking on a cell phone and signaling for a left turn. She also started moving as soon as the light changed, heading right for him. My reaction was to scream and grab him and drag him onto the sidewalk and point to the obliviously departing car as I shook wordlessly. Then I explained, "She wasn't looking. She almost hit you! Oh, I'm so glad you're safe!" After many hugs, I reminded him that even when we have the right of way, we have to beware of cars that might break the rules. Although Nicholas thought I was over-reacting ("The car didn't even touch me, Mama! I think she did see me."), he did understand my concern. I don't see how spanking him would have helped.
So it's not that a parent must never show fear of anything. What "Show no fear." means is this: Don't show your child that you're afraid of her, afraid that her behavior will ruin everything. That gives her too much power. Not only does giving your power to your child diminish your ability to take charge, but it's disturbing to the child. She is so small and so freaked out by her big feelings; seeing that her big feelings freak you out, too, makes them seem bigger and scarier. Instead, remember that you know how it feels to freak out, and you know it will pass. Decide what really needs to happen now, make it happen, and let everything else go.
Now that I have a young child myself, I'm understanding better what she meant: When he freaks out, I feel afraid—that he'll hurt himself, that he'll hurt me, that people who see us will think I'm a bad parent, and most of all that if I force him to do something I'll damage him—but showing him my fear won't help either of us. He needs me to keep myself together and show that I know what to do in this situation that's freaking him. He also needs me to control my fear because fear leads to anger, and my getting angry isn't going to help, either.
As a developmental psychology major, I learned about the four styles of parenting. I was raised by authoritative parents. I remember many, many times when they firmly directed me to do something I did not want to do, but within minutes or hours or days I realized that their judgment was better than mine. (That's not to say they were always right, particularly as I got older, but they were usually right, which led me to trust them.)
It's unfortunate that the researchers who named the parenting styles chose two terms that sound so similar, because there is a big difference between authoritARIAN and authoritATIVE. The authoritarian attitude is, "You must bow to my will always, because I said so, or else I will make you regret it." The authoritative is, "Sometimes it is necessary that you do what I say, even if you'd rather not, because my wisdom and experience give me better judgment, and in time you'll see that I am right."
Fear has its place. I am afraid that my child or I might get hit by a car, and that's a reasonable fear when we're walking near traffic. While I don't want my child to be crippled by fear in his life in general, I do want him to be afraid of things that are truly dangerous. I'm teaching him to fear cars but also to manage that fear the way I do: by being careful to stay out of the way of cars, following pedestrian safety rules, and trying to interpret the intentions of drivers. I've allowed him much more opportunity to walk (rather than be carried or strollered) near traffic, from an earlier age than many kids these days, to help him develop these skills and build them right into his understanding of how to get around in our world.
I often hear, in discussions of positive discipline, that people don't understand how a parent can never spank a child because you just have to spank in certain situations—and the most commonly cited example is a child running out into traffic. After rescuing your precious child from his brush with death, they say, you must spank him to teach him never to do that again. This is a classic example of showing fear in the the wrong way. The parent's fear for the child's safety is escalated into anger ("I told you not to do that! How dare you disobey me? I'm your mother!") and the child learns not to fear cars but to fear the parent and the pain she inflicts.
Well, one day Nicholas ran out into traffic: He jogged confidently into a crosswalk as soon as the light changed, not having noticed the driver talking on a cell phone and signaling for a left turn. She also started moving as soon as the light changed, heading right for him. My reaction was to scream and grab him and drag him onto the sidewalk and point to the obliviously departing car as I shook wordlessly. Then I explained, "She wasn't looking. She almost hit you! Oh, I'm so glad you're safe!" After many hugs, I reminded him that even when we have the right of way, we have to beware of cars that might break the rules. Although Nicholas thought I was over-reacting ("The car didn't even touch me, Mama! I think she did see me."), he did understand my concern. I don't see how spanking him would have helped.
So it's not that a parent must never show fear of anything. What "Show no fear." means is this: Don't show your child that you're afraid of her, afraid that her behavior will ruin everything. That gives her too much power. Not only does giving your power to your child diminish your ability to take charge, but it's disturbing to the child. She is so small and so freaked out by her big feelings; seeing that her big feelings freak you out, too, makes them seem bigger and scarier. Instead, remember that you know how it feels to freak out, and you know it will pass. Decide what really needs to happen now, make it happen, and let everything else go.
Menu Selection System
Here is one way for Girl Scouts to agree on what meals to have at camp or some other occasion. I've used it twice, with great success.
First, have the girls brainstorm menu ideas. Then, leaders sort out the ideas that are affordable and feasible for the cooking equipment and time available, narrowing it down to two options for each meal. (If you have been with the same troop for a while and have a good sense of what they like to eat and what kinds of cooking they like to do, you can skip the brainstorming part.)
Write the two possible menus for each meal on a sheet of scrap paper: one option on the left, one on the right. Tape these sheets on the wall in a stack such that one meal at a time is visible.
Present the choices for one meal. Call on girls for "discussion", which means statements based on something other than their personal tastes, for example, "Cereal would be easier to clean up than eggs." Girls need to raise their hands and listen to the one who has the floor.
After discussion, girls vote. Tear the paper in half, put the winning choice in your binder, and put the losing choice in the trash. If girls are evenly split, leaders cast the deciding votes.
First, have the girls brainstorm menu ideas. Then, leaders sort out the ideas that are affordable and feasible for the cooking equipment and time available, narrowing it down to two options for each meal. (If you have been with the same troop for a while and have a good sense of what they like to eat and what kinds of cooking they like to do, you can skip the brainstorming part.)
Write the two possible menus for each meal on a sheet of scrap paper: one option on the left, one on the right. Tape these sheets on the wall in a stack such that one meal at a time is visible.
Present the choices for one meal. Call on girls for "discussion", which means statements based on something other than their personal tastes, for example, "Cereal would be easier to clean up than eggs." Girls need to raise their hands and listen to the one who has the floor.
After discussion, girls vote. Tear the paper in half, put the winning choice in your binder, and put the losing choice in the trash. If girls are evenly split, leaders cast the deciding votes.
Thirty Reasons Why Women Should Have the Vote
In the late 1970s, my mother was advocating ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, and one of her organizations decided to make the editorial below part of the program they presented to other women's groups. It is adapted from an editorial in a suffragist newspaper published in Garnett, Kansas, in the era when women were fighting for the right to vote. I guess the idea was to remind women of how far they'd come in the past century, commemorate the struggles of our foremothers, and be amusingly quaint.
They chose me to read this aloud because, at four years old, I was able to read these words (after some coaching on pronunciation and meaning) but still little enough to be cute and to fit into the old-fashioned dress and sunbonnet another woman in the group had made for her daughter several years earlier, and I wasn't in full-day school so was available for these weekday events. I don't know how many times I presented it, but it must have been at least a dozen. It was good practice in public speaking, and I learned a lot of history and vocabulary from my mother's explanations of this text.
After I wrote in my previous article that I couldn't find this document online, my mom sent me the text. The original title is different, but I remember using the title above, which I think is clearer and more persuasive. Anyway, here it is:
They chose me to read this aloud because, at four years old, I was able to read these words (after some coaching on pronunciation and meaning) but still little enough to be cute and to fit into the old-fashioned dress and sunbonnet another woman in the group had made for her daughter several years earlier, and I wasn't in full-day school so was available for these weekday events. I don't know how many times I presented it, but it must have been at least a dozen. It was good practice in public speaking, and I learned a lot of history and vocabulary from my mother's explanations of this text.
After I wrote in my previous article that I couldn't find this document online, my mom sent me the text. The original title is different, but I remember using the title above, which I think is clearer and more persuasive. Anyway, here it is:
THIRTY REASONS WHY I AM A SUFFRAGIST
1. Because in the beginning God said it was not good for man to be alone.
2. Because it is just as bad for him to be alone at the ballot-box as in the Garden of Eden.
3. Because if woman was a help-meet for him there, she is equally meet at the ballot-box.
4. Because women have been rulers in other countries, and why not voters in this?
5. Because they have been a success as rulers there.
6. Because they will, we believe, be a success as voters here.
7. Because, besides being as intelligent, woman is the peer of man in purity.
8. Because purity and honesty are elements needed in politics.
9. Because of the class of persons who oppose it.
10. Because gamblers oppose it.
11. Because boot-leggers in Kansas oppose it.
12. Because “who-so-ever loveth and maketh a lie” (not referring to lawyers) is against it.
13. Because I don’t want to be classed with such persons.
14. Because ministers as a class favor it.
15. Because educated men strongly urge it.
16. Because all Christian patriots are demanding it.
17. Because some of our noblest women want it.
18. Because I delight to be counted with these classes.
19. Because “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”
20. Because our fore-fathers fought for that principal.
21. Because it is as much of an honor to fight for it now.
22. Because it is as bad to tyrannize over woman as over a few weak colonies.
23. Because there are many beautiful and smart old maids who will not tie themselves to a man and are thus unrepresented.
24. Because we believe women are less susceptible to bribery and corruption than men are.
25. Because they generally have a mind of their own. And,
26. because they sometimes have a piece to spare to the man who tries to dictate.
27. Because women are successful in every line of business.
28. Because the present condition of our government demands it.
29. Because it is right. And,
30. because, in the language of another, “I would rather be right than president.”
More about shyness
My mother just read my article on shyness and suggested a couple of additions.
One is an anecdote I'd never heard before:
At the last parent/teacher meeting of each elementary school year, your teachers confided how pleased they were that "Rebecca has finally started to come out of her shell." Every year. They were so proud of their good influence. Knowing how calmly you could address a mass audience, I tried not to let my amazement show; and in later years as I kept hearing the same brag, I tried not to snort or contradict them. I knew you were okay, and blending into the wallpaper is a useful skill too.
That's very funny, yet I completely understand what the teachers were seeing: It did take most of the school year for me to feel comfortable enough to participate in class in a normal sort of way. In junior high, I was in a math class with just 8 other kids, including some of my best friends, and had the same teacher both years, and I remember fondly the day when I had laryngitis and Mrs. Helmer commented on how quiet it was without me! I'd never gotten a comment like that before! I remember also an English teacher who wrote a poem about the class toward the beginning of the year, in which the first line about me was, Rebecca S. seldom speaks, but there's wisdom there. I wondered whether she meant that I had an aura of wisdom despite my few words (cool!!) or that it was wise not to talk too much in the class of a teacher who assigned extra work to excessive talkers!
Anyway, it's amusing that the teachers seemed to think I was blossoming because of something they had done. I think it was mostly a matter of time. I can't recall any elementary school teacher doing anything really helpful regarding my shyness with my peers*, and a few of them did the "little talk" that I grumbled about in my previous article. However, some of my teachers did become grown-up friends who helped me feel that I had allies at school. I would hang around talking with them when they had playground duty and stay after school to visit them, in some cases for years after being in their classes.
*I have to give credit, though, to the teacher who was unpleasant in many ways but managed to notice that I had not a single friend in her class but did have friends in the other classes of my grade. She pulled some strings and arranged for all my friends to be in my class the next year! That was wonderful.
My mom also reminisced about my early public-speaking experience, reading aloud a newspaper editorial titled "Thirty Reasons Why Women Should Have the Vote" to meetings of ERA advocates in the late 1970s, when I was 4 and 5 years old. That certainly was good practice in being comfortable with being seen and heard by unfamiliar people and in accepting compliments about my precocious reading ability. I can't recall what strategies I used, but my mom mentioned one that I think is worth promoting to other shy people:
I figured that you must have used a ploy similar to the one I relied on in school: Now I'm not being me, I'm being a Speaker so I'll just act the way a Speaker does. No sweat.
"I'm not being me" is a way of shrinking your self, the self that seems so awkward and vulnerable, to get it out of the way so you can get something done. People who have never been shy often seem to think that a shy person's problem is a too-small self, a lack of self-esteem and consequent fear of growing one's self to normal size. But I often felt that being me meant being highly visible to the normal-sized people, an unusually large target, like an elephant among penguins. Those other kids, the amazingly bouncy talkative ones, must have a compact and non-burdensome self securely tucked in the middle of their big colorful personality, I figured. I've since learned that some very bold people do in fact have big, cumbersome, trouble-ridden selves (which perhaps they're trying to hide behind a lot of bluster) but my point remains: A big part of shyness is worrying about your self, the way you look to others, the way they could hurt you. A shy person does not need strategies for making her self bigger; she needs help developing a public persona that works in tandem with her self.
One is an anecdote I'd never heard before:
At the last parent/teacher meeting of each elementary school year, your teachers confided how pleased they were that "Rebecca has finally started to come out of her shell." Every year. They were so proud of their good influence. Knowing how calmly you could address a mass audience, I tried not to let my amazement show; and in later years as I kept hearing the same brag, I tried not to snort or contradict them. I knew you were okay, and blending into the wallpaper is a useful skill too.
That's very funny, yet I completely understand what the teachers were seeing: It did take most of the school year for me to feel comfortable enough to participate in class in a normal sort of way. In junior high, I was in a math class with just 8 other kids, including some of my best friends, and had the same teacher both years, and I remember fondly the day when I had laryngitis and Mrs. Helmer commented on how quiet it was without me! I'd never gotten a comment like that before! I remember also an English teacher who wrote a poem about the class toward the beginning of the year, in which the first line about me was, Rebecca S. seldom speaks, but there's wisdom there. I wondered whether she meant that I had an aura of wisdom despite my few words (cool!!) or that it was wise not to talk too much in the class of a teacher who assigned extra work to excessive talkers!
Anyway, it's amusing that the teachers seemed to think I was blossoming because of something they had done. I think it was mostly a matter of time. I can't recall any elementary school teacher doing anything really helpful regarding my shyness with my peers*, and a few of them did the "little talk" that I grumbled about in my previous article. However, some of my teachers did become grown-up friends who helped me feel that I had allies at school. I would hang around talking with them when they had playground duty and stay after school to visit them, in some cases for years after being in their classes.
*I have to give credit, though, to the teacher who was unpleasant in many ways but managed to notice that I had not a single friend in her class but did have friends in the other classes of my grade. She pulled some strings and arranged for all my friends to be in my class the next year! That was wonderful.
My mom also reminisced about my early public-speaking experience, reading aloud a newspaper editorial titled "Thirty Reasons Why Women Should Have the Vote" to meetings of ERA advocates in the late 1970s, when I was 4 and 5 years old. That certainly was good practice in being comfortable with being seen and heard by unfamiliar people and in accepting compliments about my precocious reading ability. I can't recall what strategies I used, but my mom mentioned one that I think is worth promoting to other shy people:
I figured that you must have used a ploy similar to the one I relied on in school: Now I'm not being me, I'm being a Speaker so I'll just act the way a Speaker does. No sweat.
"I'm not being me" is a way of shrinking your self, the self that seems so awkward and vulnerable, to get it out of the way so you can get something done. People who have never been shy often seem to think that a shy person's problem is a too-small self, a lack of self-esteem and consequent fear of growing one's self to normal size. But I often felt that being me meant being highly visible to the normal-sized people, an unusually large target, like an elephant among penguins. Those other kids, the amazingly bouncy talkative ones, must have a compact and non-burdensome self securely tucked in the middle of their big colorful personality, I figured. I've since learned that some very bold people do in fact have big, cumbersome, trouble-ridden selves (which perhaps they're trying to hide behind a lot of bluster) but my point remains: A big part of shyness is worrying about your self, the way you look to others, the way they could hurt you. A shy person does not need strategies for making her self bigger; she needs help developing a public persona that works in tandem with her self.