Does a Perfect Childhood Make You Soft?
My Childhood With Andre
I ask this question during my fourth go-round with the song, “Ghostbusters.” It’s playing in the industrial parking lot of a quaint Pennsylvania suburb where a group of elementary school children are having a Halloween parade. An amplifier is perched on a chair, an orange extension cord leading to a cute schoolhouse, complete with glimmering swing set.
Sure, it’s an industrial complex, but filled with holistic chiropractors and fancy personalized gyms. The children dutifully march in an oval, all being feverishly photographed by their parents. Siblings too young to be in school are clinging to their moms’ legs wearing ladybug costumes or puffy princess dresses.
The principal, dressed in an elaborate penguin suit, addresses the crowd and it starts again, tinny, cheerful: “If there’s something strange, in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!”
Well, there is something strange in this neighborhood, the fact that there is nothing strange in this neighborhood.
Bucks County, PA, at least from where I sit, is a world of gummy, removable pumpkin stickers for the sliding door to one’s giant manicured lawn. It’s a world of Halloween-themed puffy marshmallow ghost Peeps atop steaming cups of homemade hot chocolate in Number One Dad mugs. This is a Jack-o-lantern expertly carved with stencils world. Who you gonna call? Your neighbor to see if she and her toddler twins want to help decorate your witch cupcakes.
Back to me staring at this parade of children. I realize this town is a world of children, a world built around and for them, softer than a stack of Peeps on a heap of fall leaves. Later in the day, I will attend another parade to see my nephews march, both as Superman. My toddler will step in line with his own matching Superman suit, trailing his suburban cousins. This is my husband’s world, part of his childhood, whereas I grew up on the mean streets of San Francisco.
It’s not a saying, I mean, it is a saying, but the streets were kind of mean.
“If there’s something strange, in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?” Um, not the Popo, not where I grew up, because they’re busy scraping a body up off the corner in Hunters Point. You know what else was strange in my neighborhood? Child molesters. Yeah, I’m about to bum you out. Instead of the principal putting on a penguin suit, we had several assemblies every year during which we were warned not to follow anyone asking for help “finding lost puppies” or offering candy.
A guy once offered me a ride home from elementary school, leaning out of a rusty sedan, but I was so convinced my mom would never have arranged a ride for me I knew he was “something strange” and ran through an empty lot to my flat on a nearby hill, which I entered with a latch key. Looking back, this didn’t even merit telling my mom.
So, staring at the orange extension cord allowing the citizens of Bucks County to hear Ghostbusters as their adorable children made the rounds as Woody or Spiderman or Rapunzel, I asked myself, what’s so wrong with adults taking the day off, fitting themselves into a world of kids?
For reference, just know that when I was young, my dad took me to see the film, “My Dinner with Andre,” because he wanted to see it. The entire film consists of two guys talking philosophy over dinner, one of them played by Wally Shawn. I felt lucky to be included, because us city kids, we were just trying to fit into a world of grown-ups. Even if the films weren’t animated and we would never get a Wally Shawn action figure, we made due.
How could this type of life not be better? Or, am I just bitter? Maybe a Peep in my cocoa would have made me a happier person.
On the other hand, as I stare at the quiet streets (and duh, I get it, children get hurt here and everywhere, but you know what I mean) I wonder why it bothers me, just a tiny, teeny, weensy bit, that these kids are the center of the world. Striving and longing can’t live in a place like this. If they did, they would have a Beagle named Rascal and a $3,000 swing set.
Striving and longing breed symphonies and novels and vaccines and microprocessors, right? But maybe it’s okay for most of us to just be happy and serene. Maybe that’s my prayer for my own little Superman, to one day have a mid-level management job, a quiet mind, a decent dental plan and in his own worn mug, a slowly melting Peep.
Brilliant. You’re my favorite chick. Miss you on Carolla’s Pcast.
Hi.
This has nothing to do with this column. I first had respect* for you, Teresa, on Adam’s morning show, and I lamented** when you left the podcast.
I lost track of you.
I just found a site and heard your sparring match with david frum (PTShow), and my utmost*** admiration* is back.
Sincerely,
Anthony
*a boner
**softened
***sincere and respectful
We have been dealing with this at my house lately too. My almost 6 year old told me he had a hard life while whining over a dinner that included tater tots. I shouldn’t have BUT I sorta explained what a foster kid was and how THAT was hard and how he had parents who loved him, food to eat and basically everything he ever wanted. What I wanted to say do was launch into a comparison to how I had it, my version of walking uphill in the snow on my way home from school but I thought the foster kid stuff was already a lil far. My husband has them alone in the mornings while Im at work and then we trade off so he can go to work, they hang out and he has an involved Dad. Once on the phone with my Dad when I announced it was Jennifer, he said Jennifer who…. I loved this and am happy to know its now just me who feels like this.
These are the questions I ask myself everyday as I walk the streets of LA wondering if I want to stay here when I have kids, and as I spend my days writing about living an extraordinary life… all the while wondering why… why I can’t just be content to live a simple life and let others do the same? But I know my simple life would be based on fear so I can’t, I just can’t do that. I want to pursue more and I want to teach my kids to do the same.
I’ve known lots of children who have grown up with “soft” happy childhoods, and now are young adults, get along well with their parents, and are now reasonably pretty happy people. I mean, look at Dr. Drew’s kids! And on the flipside, think of the ton of miserable adults who had horrible, tough childhoods and are just floundering young adults, in and out of trouble, no ambition. Just because you know a few people who have conquered the world in spite of their rough childhoods, doesn’t mean that’s the majority of people.
the concrete’s always greener…
I agree whole heartedly
And Happy Thanksgiving to you
I believe strongly in something I learned early on in life, we learn more from our failures and struggles than we do from our successes and cruises on easy street.
That said, let’s remember, that for every idyllic Halloween parade happening at a gleaming school in Small Town USA, there is a teen-ager created meth lab behind a barn door, or kids cyber bullying a classmate to the point of suicide, or mentally/socially ill outcasts plotting how to shoot up their school, or, more apropos of a news segment I’m watching right now, young adults developing a cheating ring in a suburban NJ town aimed a making money by fraudulently taking the SAT for someone else.
Go ahead, take your finger nail and scrape back the veneer.
Hey Teresa,
Hope you enjoyed your vacay with Batman’s family. I recognize your post was intentionally humorous and tongue firmly planted in cheek… but this topic has become somewhat of a hyper-focus for me. I blame Dr. Drew for making me see narcissism lurking and lurching at every corner and social fad or societal construct. My kids are older than Buster and it has made me accutely aware of how an entire generation of self-entitled little snots are poised to drown our country in me, me, me debris and the more sobering thought that they will be running the nursing homes we’ll all be occupying one day, after they get done murdering their toddlers and leaving them in shallow ad hoc graves all over this great land.
I think there are many character qualities that humans can only truly learn and embrace as a result of struggling through whatever challenges their particular genetics/skill set can work through. I don’t think every person has SEAL school in them, maybe a mild 8th grade PE Hazing or a minor social stigma in high school or coping with the discovery that your parents voted Republican or even the heart break of psoriasis … but as a species, we need to conquer some kind of challenge to have the selfish egotism knocked off of us and compassion and humility installed.
I wouldn’t have wanted my kids to deal with the many, many emotional tsunami that were a part of my daily childhood – but I am glad that they faced some realities of their own, owing to the fact that they were raised mainly by a single Mom. They seem to be turning out OK, and I thank both the influence of growing up in LA and the accidental influence of having to solve a lot of problems on their own because their Mom wasn’t always available at the drop of a hat to solve it for them.
Glad to see ya back !