S is for Strawberries

When I was about 4 years old, and my little brother was two, we moved to our first real house. Before that we had lived in an apartment and then a row house, but now we had a whole big front yard and back yard of our own. On one of our first days there, we were playing on the side of the house when we found a whole garden full of strawberries. We couldn't believe it, and when we tasted them, they were so sweet and juicy that soon we had eaten all of them.

When we told my mom, she was mad, because that garden belonged to our next door neighbor, and she made us go next door and apologize. But we were too afraid to knock on a stranger's door, so we just sat in the front yard and cried. Then my mom came out and marched us over there. Our neighbor, Mrs. Huddleston, was very forgiving, but we never did that again!

Life Lesson: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is!

R is for Rainy Days

The soft patter of the rain on our deck and the warm air floating in through the sliding glass door this morning reminded me of rainy days on summer vacation when I was a kid. As long as there weren't too many of them, it was always fun to find a way to occupy ourselves indoors.

A forced break from the sunshine and pool allowed us to listen to records and play spoons and pinochle, drink sweaty glasses of iced tea with lemonade, and read books out on the covered side porch. Sometimes the 4 O'Clock Movie would capture our attention and we would lose ourselves in some old black and white B movie, or else spend hours at the dining room table working on a jigsaw puzzle.

After dinner, if the rain had stopped, we ran around barefoot in the wet grass catching fireflies and putting them in a peanut butter jar with holes punched in the lid. The rule was that we had to let them go at the end of the evening, so we left the open jar on the back porch when we went inside to watch summer replacement variety shows before bed.

It seems like back then we slept soundly every night and woke up every day rested and ready for whatever the day might bring, rain or shine.

I think Sarah Dessen captured our lives perfectly in her novel Along for the Ride: "In the summer, the days were long, stretching into each other. Out of school, everything was on pause and yet happening at the same time, this collection of weeks when anything was possible."

Life Lesson: Summer is almost here!

Q is for a Question of Fairness

We walked over to pick our dog up from her friend Beckett's house this afternoon, and peering inside I could see the movie Jaws was on the television. It was the scene where first the dog and then the kid on the raft gets eaten by the shark.

"I was so young when it came out," Heidi said, "I don't really know the movie very well."

I know the movie quite well. I was 13 the summer everyone was talking about Jaws. "Don't go into the water" and "We're gonna need a bigger boat" were catchphrases and punchlines that everybody got. Everybody, that is, except me and my brother and sister. We were not allowed to see PG-Rated movies, and so Jaws was out. That didn't keep us from pestering my mom about seeing the movie, though, and I think when my aunt let my cousins, who were around our ages, go, that my mom decided we could see the movie of the summer, too.

I was excited for all of two minutes until I decided that if I had to wait until I was 13 to see a PG movie, then it was only fair that my brother and sister should have to wait, too. My mother dismissed my complaint out of hand, which shouldn't have surprised me, because we were one of those families with the same expectations and restrictions for all of us, same bedtime, same allowance, same number of chores. Even so, I chose this battle, and I pitched a fit, perhaps the last tantrum of my childhood.

My mother was unmoved. "Either you all go or none of you go," she told me, and it was clear she didn't care which I decided. My brother and sister on the other hand, were furious with me both for jeopardizing the movie AND for making the case at all. In the end? We saw the movie. For me, it did not live up to all the hype, but I liked knowing what the hype was about. I also regretted making such a big deal of the situation, not because I thought I was wrong, but because of the hard feelings.

Life Lesson:  Choose your battles wisely.

P is for Partay!

One of my teammates devised a plan to have a Dance-Off during his office hours this week. He even produced a video, complete with his adorable nine-month-old son, which made it pretty hard to turn down that invitation. So at 12:30 today, about 20 or so of us gathered virtually, familiar faces peering out from the tiles of the screen. It was by far the best attended session of online schooling so far, and we all happily chatted as we waited for the main event. Oh, there was a giggle of a dance-off, but when it was through, we played the Cha-Cha Slide, and everyone got a chance to show off some moves. The thirty minutes slid by, and there were smiles all around as we said good-bye.

Life Lesson: Sometimes just showing up is enough.

O is for Opinion, Please

A couple of weeks ago I got a mysterious envelope in the mail. It was addressed to the resident of our address, and it contained 2 crisp dollar bills along with an exclusive invitation to join the Knowledge Panel.

According to my letter, KnowledgePanel, now part of Ipsos, was created by two Stanford University professors in 1999. Ipsos randomly selects only a few addresses each year to receive an invitation to join KnowledgePanel, a group that takes part in national polls and surveys. 

So academic.
So elite.
So too good to be true.

The letter continued, Our panel helps us track national trends in the economy, politics, entertainment, sports and new products. We would like your household to be a part of this important research.

Of course I was suspicious! Who are these Ipsos people who want me to "join" them, and what does that even mean? A little internet research later, I learned that, according to Wikipedia, Ipsos "is a multinational market research and a consulting firm based in Paris."

I also discovered that, according to Reddit, they are pretty much who and what they say they are: a French market research firm who wants my American opinion.

Oo la la!

Life Lesson: “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” ~William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well

N is for Not Fine, Thanks

Perhaps the best advice I've heard about coping with all the disruption and anxiety of social and physical distancing is to take some time to search your self and see what is working for you now that wasn't before. Without denying the hardship and loss of anyone else, I acknowledge that the pace of this life suits me. I can tell that fewer options, less time spent on shopping and other errands, and more sleep are good for me.

So if I could only set aside concern for the good and welfare of others, (a precept that is baked into my life's work), I might say that I was more than fine.

Life Lesson: Look at the big picture.

M is for Murder Most Entertaining

We solved our murder box mystery yesterday. Over the last couple of months, sifting through evidence, cracking codes, and reading crime reports and letters out loud, has become sort of a Saturday morning routine, like cartoons for grown-ups.

When I was younger, the relatively new field of forensic anthropology was fascinating to me. So much so that, for Christmas one year, my mother gave me a ticket to a seminar at the Smithsonian on the topic. Back then, I used to read gory murder mysteries with gusto, and I was equally captivated by anything to do with serial killers and other true crime.

But like cartoons, I kind of feel like the older I get, the less entertaining someone else's misfortune is. Oh, I still get sucked in by the odd Dateline or 48 Hours, but it's harder to shake the knowledge that real lives were shattered, and at least one was ended by the events that I'm sitting on my couch watching.

The murder box made it easy to stay detached. Clearly fictional, the setting was 85 years in the past; none of the principals were even alive. And it was fun.

But still. It's a little twisted, isn't it?

Life Lesson: "Vicarious living is only slightly less impossible than vicarious eating." ~Mason Cooley