LifePundit

The Thirteenth Birthday

Lily turned 13, which I think makes me really, really ancient. I no longer understand the English language as it is used in middle school, I've never heard of the singers she and her friends listen to and can be an embarrassment with absolutely no effort or intention. I can also drive and pay for the birthday dinner at The Melting Pot (Paul was sick in bed), so I have some usefulness.

We celebrated last weekend. Four 13-year-olds and me. They aren't children anymore, which Paul finds even more disturbing than I do based on his full understanding of teenage boys and what they will do and say in order to fool teenage girls into thinking, well, whatever teenage girls need to think in order to go along with the plans of teenage boys. On this, ignorance is bliss.

They were all so grown up at dinner. Not dressed up exactly, but dressed up in a teenage way. Paul kissed Lily goodbye before we went out, and when she left the room he said, "She looks like a hooker." She didn't. She just didn't look 12. "Do they all look like that?" he asked. Of course they do. No wonder he was sick in bed.

The restaurant gave Lily a balloon bouquet, which escaped into a tree in the parking lot. This was the moment of grace for me. Suddenly, these four would-be-sophisticates returned to being kids. The photo with this post is of their attempt to rescue the balloons. They succeeded. (The white spots are rain drops.)

I'd write a long and mushy post about "now that she's thirteen" and all that but I don't think I'd survive. I'm just going to ignore it as best I can and hope that she and her friends will never be too old to do what it takes to get balloons out of trees.

To read about what she wanted for her birthday, go here.

Don't You Love a Good "Dumb Robber" Story?

Next to chocolate, there's nothing more satisfying than a good "dumb robber" story. Here's one from Sydney, Australia:

Two armed robbers who targeted a Sydney bar that was hosting a bikers' meeting must have "failed robber school", said the club's chairman.

The men stormed the bar brandishing machetes and wearing balaclavas - unaware that 50 bikers were holding a meeting in an adjoining room.

For the rest of this story, go here.

Shopping with My Father

I've just written at post at The Clock Stops Here and somehow it ended up with a story about my father. Since some of you seem to like those, here's the link: Remember: You Don't Have to Look at You.

Should It Matter if You Make a Grunting Noise on the Tennis Court?

A girl in Australia has been told she can't continue to place tennis at her club if she keeps up the grunting sounds while she plays. Here's an excerpt from Fox:

(Her father says) "There's no rule against it, so they've made a rule against it."

 

Edwards said the club had asked him for an assurance Lauryn would remain silent on the court.

 

"They told me to guarantee she won't grunt or she can't play," he said.

 

"How can I guarantee that? She's been doing it since she was really little. She's her own person. What do they want me to do? Put Band-Aids over her mouth? They made her cry on the court when they told her."

 

Lauryn, who has attention deficit disorder, has been playing tennis since the age of four, after it was recommended by her school psychologist at Sunbury Primary to burn energy and keep her focused.

 

Dubbed Lauryn Sharapova by an old coach, she said she played better when grunting.

 

"It feels natural to do my noise. I'm not faking it," Lauryn said. "It makes me play better. When I don't do it, I don't play my best tennis. And now people have told me I can't play if I do it."

Oh, PLEASE! If I were really nice this post would read: What!? They're telling an 8-year-old girl she can't make obnoxious grunting noises on the tennis court while she plays?

Her parents should sue them for damaging her self-esteem and some kind of restraint-of-play thing. It's just awful. You can't make guttural sounds on the tennis court when you play? This is against all human dignity. Plus she's got ADD -- you people are just cruel.

But instead, I'm going to say, "Can you make that universal?" Aerobics instructors shouldn't squeal. And tennis players shouldn't grunt.

Do surgeons need to make odd, offensive noises while they operate? Do dressage riders have to grunt when they're asking for a really hard movement (the answer is "no" and they'd be penalized if they did)? Shut up on the tennis courts, okay? All of you. If you get hit in the belly really, really hard, then, okay. You can grunt. But otherwise, how about restoring some class and dignity to the game?

Are Kittens the New Flowers?

I saw something in the bridal section of the Sunday paper a while back and I can't quit thinking about it. There was a huge picture of a smiling bride holding, not a bouquet, but a white kitten. It looked even stupider than it sounds, and I like kittens.

I have some questions. Did she carry the kitten down the aisle? Was it sedated? Was it her kitten, or a borrowed one, like the bouquets you use for a wedding portrait? Will her bridesmaids be carrying pink kittens? Or perhaps dachshund puppies?

Am I missing something?

Who Says Cats Don't Care About People?

I love cats, but I'd hate to think my life was in their paws. When you think about cats and fireman, for instance, you think about the cat going up the tree and the fireman coming to get the cat down. You don't think about a cat alerting its owners, Lassie-style, to the fire smoldering in their laundry room. You don't think about a cat saving its owners' lives.

Here's a story for us cat lovers to mention the next time our cat-hating friends (not that we'd still be friends) tell us that cats are selfish and useless, which we all know to be true even if this story disproves that:

In Newberry County one woman is thankful her cat would not let her go to bed on Monday night.

 

"He kept nudging me, so finally I got up and went to go check," said Amanda Moss.

 

Amanda Moss says at her cat Cash's urging, she went and checked the kitchen and her laundry room.

 

She smelled smoke in the laundry room and got her husband.

 

He lifted the cover off of their hot water heater and found a small fire already burning.

 

He and Moss' father were able to get the fire out before it got any bigger.

 

And now Cash is getting some star treatment.

 

"Flirting" in London

Paul and I went on our honeymoon in London in July, 1985. My last post about Saudi Arabia arresting young men for flirting reminded me of an odd event that happened then.

Paul and I were sitting in the hotel bar having a drink with his aunt, who is absolutely delightful even if she is his mother's sister. Paul is not the jealous type and would probably trade me for an advantageous number of goats, but there was this Arabic man there whose excess attention was bothering him. I didn't notice, but the stranger was staring. At me. (I was appropriately dressed but not wearing a burka.) Then the stranger moved his chair closer. And closer. He said nothing. He just kept sliding in my direction. And kept staring.

Paul never got an offer for goats or whatever the right trade might have been, so he harrumphed over and put his chair between the tiny space left between my chair and the strangers.

Was this a form of flirting? An insult? A bargaining posture? Or just plain rudeness?

And why do I feel the need to say again that I was dressed just fine?  Anyway. The three of us left.

I have no idea why I chose this image of Sassy Goat Milk Soap for this post. The song's worth a listen. At least it makes as much sense as this post. I meant to put in a photo of a burka.

Saudi Men Arrested for Flirting with Girls

Here I am worried about guns, gangs and cell phones in the school, and in Saudi Arabia they're arresting young men for flirting with girls. Here's an excerpt from the BBC News article:

Saudi men arrested for 'flirting'

                                                                                    

Relations between the sexes outside marriage is against the law

Prosecutors in Saudi Arabia have begun investigating 57 young men who were arrested on Thursday for flirting with girls at shopping centres in Mecca.

The men are accused of wearing indecent clothes, playing loud music and dancing in order to attract the attention of girls, the Saudi Gazette reported.

I have so many reactions to this report I don't know where to start.

1. They arrested young men for flirting? What's the matter? They couldn't find the young women to behead instead?
2. What kind of young men flirt with girls? Are the young men pedophiles, or are the BBC writers cavemen who call adult females "girls"?
3. They only found 57 young men who were trying to attract the attention of the opposite sex by what my mother would have called "showing off"? The morality police should be arrested for lack of effort.

Should Students be Allowed to Have Cell Phones at School?

If Lily is found to have a cell phone at school, it will be confiscated.

We bought her the phone because she didn't feel safe at school. Although she's in a magnet program, it's within a larger school where it's not uncommon to have fights. One of the boys in the single-gender program was jumped by some girls in the general population, who beat him up under the guidance and direction of an older male student in a gang-initiation.

Her first day at school she got in the wrong place at the wrong time and didn't know where to go to get away from a fight that broke out between two older male students. The high school this middle school feeds into has a known and uncontrolled gang problem.

And even if the school were filled with pacifist cherubs, that doesn't mean that some crazy with a gun won't turn up and do what crazies with guns do. There is an armed guard, but it's a large campus.

I understand why schools don't want the students on phones. They can be disruptive, distracting and used for cheating. They can also be used in case of emergency.

I keep telling her to take it in spite of the rules and to keep it turned off and hidden. Being a good kid, she won't break the rules. I don't want to alarm her by telling her why I want her to do this, so I've backed off.

I wonder if there is a way that schools could accommodate cell phones by using permission to carry them as an incentive? If you're on honor roll, for instance, you can carry a phone that's turned off. You can turn it on after the final bell rings. During tests they'd sit on the teacher's desk, just to be sure.

If more students carried phones and used them legitimately, I think our schools could be safer.

And in a culture where it's not cool to be smart, maybe earning the ability to carry your phone would counter some of this destructive attitude.

What do you think?

Lost in "Lost"

I'm not much of a TV watcher beyond "24," "Masterpiece Theatre" and the news. That's mainly because I'm not allowed to hold the remotes and I don't care for "Cops," "American Idol" or all the other channels quickly flipping by.

I did hold the remotes once. I was wicked. I'd watch Paul's eyes. Whenever they would focus and I could tell he was engaging with what he was seeing on TV, I'd switch to another channel. I did this repeatedly until I accidentally found a show on how to renovate a toilet. I left it on that and just watched him. He finally figured it out.

Yes, I was mean. Vengeful might be a better word. (I seem to be mean today. Actually, not meaner than usual but more inclined to admit it. Must be the cold meds.)

But I've figured out a way around this problem in our house. We watch old TV series we didn't watch when they first came out because that would have required staying on one channel for more than fifteen seconds.

Last year we discovered "24" and watched all the seasons. Then we did "Firefly." We've recently discovered "Lost," and although the writer part of me feels like I've been had (not so sure about  revealing mystery as a substitute for plot), I'm enjoying the show.

We've got two more DVDs left in Season 1, then we'll do Seasons 2 and 3. That will have us all set to start Season 4 when it cranks up February 3.

Oops. That was three weeks ago.

So, do we jump right in tomorrow night and watch "Lost," knowing we'll be completely lost and possibly have some of the things in the previous seasons spoiled for us, or do we keep going from the beginning and wait for the DVDs to come out on Season 4?

We're not good waiters. We're not good planners, either, so we may forget to watch the current season. Or do it all at once.