Mixing Genres

NOT FOR THE KIDS. OR PEOPLE WITH CLASS. STRICTLY FOR ADULT PURPOSES. SEE YOUR DOCTOR IF YOU EXPERIENCE PROLONGED SYMPTOMS.


Okay, disclaimer over. For the twisted sense of humor set:

Mixing genres allows the creative juices to really flow. Observe what happens when this clever Australian quartet combines a Wiggles-type ditty with adult themes:



Genius, I tell you. Genius. Way better than Jane Austen zombies.

I am not a baker.

I like savory things. Savoury, truth be told, since I think the extra vowel in the British spelling is sort of like an onomatopoeia for the palate. More layers to the word, more layers to the flavor. Even subtle layers, like an extra vowel you might not hear but somehow sense is present.

Lobster enchiladas? No problem.
Rack of lamb with rosemary and red wine reduction sauce? I could do it in my sleep.

Sugar cookies? Epic fail.

We produced the ugliest sugar cookies EVER today. They were tasty, mind you, but could my 6 and 3 year old cut them into anything resembling holiday shapes? That would be a resounding NO. We had to settle for green and red sugar sprinkled blobs.

My poor kids. They may never overcome the tragedy of their childhood.

I think I'll stick with coffee creme brulee. It's the only dessert I can produce with the desired result.

Resolved: Something Seasonal Will Get Done Up in Here

The Rejectionist! Uncontest! Here are my resolutions:

1. I resolve to actually put something on the tree. Lights AND ornaments. It's up in the living room and mocking me in its naked state. The kids have concluded that the boxes of ornaments are actually kitty toys since they have been on the floor for two days and still show no inclination of migrating toward the tree.

2. I resolve to take the tree down before New Year's Valentine's Day.

3. I resolve to complete the annual family slide show that we watch on Christmas Eve. Oh, and the slide shows that I didn't get done last year or the year before.

4. I resolve to get my poor little boy scout's badges attached to his uniform. Since I have had both for three months.

5. I resolve to apply the super ideas to improve my MS to my MS.

And in the actual self-improvement instead of get caught up category:

6. I resolve to do one randomly nice thing each day. Take someone else's grocery cart back to the store, pay for the next person's coffee, something. Smiling at someone who is rude to me totally counts.

24, Family Style

24 hours in the car. That's just getting there and getting back. I am not Michelle Duggar. I don't travel with a list of fun songs we can sing or prepared to quiz my kids on the histories of the states we traverse. Mostly,  I huddle against the front heated seat, thank Heaven for the invention of DVD players, and cling to the hope that one of those all-too-brief respites of quiet will erupt in the back seat.

Coloring books get us through the first hour. Then Mama and Daddy cave and put in a movie. Three hours in, things have gone pretty well. (Mama's not looking for liquor stores just off the interstate. Yet.) We watch How to Train Your Dragon, a universal favorite. 

HtTYD finishes and we have not quite enough time for another flick plus the kids need to start winding down since we are spending the night in a hotel. You know, exotic and exciting for the six and under set who have not yet developed volume control for the larynx and cause disturbances for other guests.

So the Pirate invents a travel game. 

"Mama, I have a dragon in my head. Know what he looks like?"

The swollen, rusty remnants of the blue harvest moon wink at me from just over the Blue Ridge mountains. Time was the moon and I would flirt with each other in quiet until it grew too silver and important to talk to the likes of me. No such luck tonight.

"No, sweetie. I have no idea. Tell me about the dragon." Pleasepleaseplease don't let this be one of those topics he gets looped on.

"His tail is two miles long and his fangs are one mile long. The moon looks kind of like his eye."

Ha! The moon has often been my dragon's eye. A sleepy dragon, waking just enough to open one eye and look me over. It's kind of a cool moment of connection.

"Do you have a dragon in your mind, Mama?"

"Yes."

"What does he look like?"

"SHE is sometimes glittery black, but sometimes she is copper, like a new penny. Her eyes look like the moon, too. Her wings are like bat wings but very beautiful."

"Daddy? Do you have a dragon?"

"Yep. He has a fluffy blue tail, he is blue and white, and he has a blue button nose."

Pirate giggles. Then he asks the Princess what her dragon looks like.

"Pank." (Really, I swear we say "pink" despite any and all claims of redneck heritage but Princess persists in "pank.") "Wif pank polka dots and pank wings."

"My dragon is born in a thundercloud and that's where he lives. Where does your dragon live, Mama?"

Mama's dragon lives in a volcano. Daddy's lives in the dryer lint. Princess' lives in a pink castle.

"My dragon's weakness is rain. He doesn't like it." An unfortunate circumstance for a dragon who resides in thunderclouds, but there you have it. "Does your dragon have a weakness, Mama?"

"Ice. That's why she lives in a volcano."

"What about yours, Daddy?"

"Dryer sheets."

Pirate asks Princess what her dragon's weakness is. I wait with bated breath, wondering what could possibly threaten such a terrifying amalgamation of Pepto-Bismol colored horror.

"Two seven eight," Princess replies, deadly serious.

Fifteen minutes of that road trip were high quality family fun. I even felt like a pretty good mom. And despite meeting Grandpa and "Auntsy" (the three year old contraction of "Aunt Nancy"), pony rides, and a house full of cats and musical instruments, Pirate's favorite part was the road trip. Because we were all in the car together.

It melted my grinchy heart. Or maybe that was just the seat heater.

Animal Dialogue

TBIM is out of town. He usually lets the dogs out last thing at night and they get a "cookie" when they come back in. He trained them or they trained him. You be the judge.

Stage: Dark. Quiet. Kids in slumber, house at peace. Quiet rumblings of dryer and sussurations of dishwasher.

Mama: Okay! Everybody out. Get busy!

Dogs exit stage.


Dogs re-enter.


Lulu: Snuffle, whuff, snort, happy dance. (Dog-ese for "I love you! Love, love, love you! Love ya, mean it! Good stuff comin'?"

George: Elegant, dignified wave of gorgeous plumage he calls a tail. ("Yes, milady, favor us with a courtesy.")

Mama (oblivious): Good dogs! Good job!

Lulu: BIG happy dance!

George: Happy shuffle.

Mama moves to stage right, the living room. Mama reclines. Dogs follow in disbelief.


***


Scene: Mama at ease on sofa. George resigned on floor. Lulu darting back and forth to the door in the universal code for gottago gottago GOTTA GO!

Mama: You just went out! You can't be serious. No. Uh-unh. No way.

Lulu: Squirmy wriggles.

George: Sad gaze of the betrayed.

Lulu: More squirmy wriggles. ("No, srsly, I mean it!")

Mama: Fine. But take care of business this time.

All: Hustle to the back door. Dogs exit.

George and Lu: Promptly return to door. 


Mama: OOooh! I coulda had a V-8! Cookies!

Crunchings and munchings for George and Lu, tranquility at last for Mama.

The End.


OH! Except for the cat, who tried to follow my roastbeef sandwich INTO MY MOUTH. Saucy little minx.

Grounds for Divorce

That Boy I Married took the princess shopping yesterday while the Pirate and I spookified the yard for Halloween.

They returned with a pinky-purpley-sparkly make-up kit. With NAIL POLISH.

I've endured four applications of saccharine flavored lip gloss already this morning. I am assured that I look very beautiful. Nails have been painted to glittery perfection. The campaign to paint again is now officially launched.

Oh, Lordy! She's eyeballing the dogs with a bottle of nail polish clutched in her manicured fist. Signing off now.

Pray for us.

Banned Book Review: Speak

A day late and a dollar short, but The Rejectionist's call for banned book reviews has been heeded!

I read Speak last week just because it was banned. I didn't think I would like it because everywhere I looked this book was described as the story of a girl who was raped and kept silent. In this regard, proponents of Speak are making the same mistake that nay-saying book banners are.

It is not about rape. It is not about a rape victim who chooses to remain silent.

IT IS NOT ABOUT RAPE.

Melinda, the main character, is raped. She does not choose to remain silent, she simply can't speak. Her trauma has left her so isolated and depressed that she can't bring herself to speak of it, or much of anything else. The inciting incident could have been any trauma, the point is that this girl withdraws so abruptly and so far that no one can figure her out and furthermore, no one tries to. She has no support. She is representative of so many marginalized kids that she is practically a poster child for why the high school years are NOT the best of your life.

It is about a girl who is drowning while no one notices.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, on to the review-y portion of the show.

First: This book is side-splittingly funny. I'm like most of the unwashed genre-reading masses. I'm unlikely to read a book because it tackles a tough issue but I will devour a book that keeps me turning the pages. Every synopsis, every reference to Speak makes it sound downright bleak but Anderson does a masterful job infusing Melinda's voice with an authentic, sometimes acerbic commentary on high school life.

On the first page Melinda applies her full concentration to where she will sit on the bus. Again in the cafeteria. Her friends have judged her a narc and abandoned her and the only person who will sit with her on purpose is a transfer student with no friends. Really takes you back, doesn't it? Who doesn't remember the crushing importance of where you sit and WHOM you sit with?

Heather-the-transfer-from-Ohio is now Melinda's only companion. Heather is quite the joiner, looking for any entre onto the high school social ladder. Drama club, the Marthas (a clique of seasonal sweater wearing, crafty, teacher supportive types), pep rallies, all of these represent inclusion to Heather. Melinda gets swept along for the ride because she lacks the energy to object. She harbors no hope or ambition of being included.

Meanwhile, Melinda's ex-best friend Rachel is carving out a new identity for herself:

Rachel is with me in the bathroom. Edit that. Rachelle is with me in the bathroom. She has changed her name. Rachelle is reclaiming her European heritage by hanging out with the foreign-exchange students...She can swear in French. She wears black stockings with runs and doesn't shave under her arms.

And later:

She puts a candy cigarette between her lips. Rachelle wants desperately to smoke, but she has asthma, She has started a new Thing, unheard of for a ninth-grader. Candy cigarettes...Next thing you know, she'll be drinking black coffee and reading books without pictures.

Melinda's observations on her teachers are equally funny and insightful. Over the course of the year we see her first impressions of her art teacher flesh out, but he is the only teacher who makes an effort to reach her. He is also the one who comes closest to getting her to talk. She has stretched enough in his class to create a truly disturbing sculpture of a mute Barbie trapped inside a literal skeleton- the remains of the turkey her parents failed to render edible for Thanksgiving.

Her art teacher and relationship with art evolve in a fascinating way. She struggles with expression. Her teacher recognizes this and encourages her to keep trying, to find what works. He gives her a book of Picasso sketches. The disconnect from reality in Cubism speaks strongly to her own view of herself and her reality. Melinda's struggle with expressing herself through art proves her need to communicate even though conversation is beyond her grasp. It's delicate and subtle, but this detail underscores the idea that Melinda did not choose silence. She needs to be heard and lacks the tools to make it happen.

The remainder of Melinda's teachers seem uninterested in her frequent class-skipping, satisfied with the stolen hall passes she provides. Her grades are terrible, a huge departure from the previous year, and as a result her parents decide to tighten up on discipline. Heather eventually abandons her because she is such a downer. Not once has anyone asked her what is wrong or if they can help. When she tries to tell anyone anything more than "yes" or "no", her throat closes up to the point that she cannot talk. Her parents schedule a conference with the principal:

We have a meeting with Principal Principal. Someone has noticed that I've been absent. And that I don't talk.

They want me to speak.

"Why won't you say anything?" For the love of God, open your mouth!" "This is childish, Melinda." "Say something." "You are only hurting yourself by refusing to cooperate." "I don't know why she's doing this to us."

Melinda observes the conference, removed and imagining the entire thing as a scene in a musical. Her mother is concerned that the principal will think there are marital problems. The father threatens to call the school board. The guidance counselor institutes a carrot-and-stick plan whereby negative behavior has "consequences" and positive is rewarded.

At the end of the conference Melinda muses:
"Do they choose to be so dense? Were they born that way? I have no friends. I have nothing. I say nothing. I am nothing. I wonder how long it takes to ride a bus to Arizona."

By the end of the school year, Melinda's need to speak is so urgent that in one or two passages I felt my own throat tighten, trying to push the words out for her. She also has meaningful conversation with two people, both of whom show an interest in her. Her classmate David reaches out to her with a note first, supportive of her, indicating that her parents should have taken action against the teacher who forced her to do a report in front of the class. He follows up with conversation at her locker. It is the first meaningful dialogue she has outside of her head and occurs in the last quarter of the school year (and the book).

It stood out for two reasons. First, it was the first time I realized how little dialogue there had been. That's damn hard to pull off and keep a reader interested. Second, all it took to get her to speak more than one word at a time was a kind gesture and indication of true interest. It cracked her armor and the next person who speaks to her instead of at her is Ivy, another former friend. They talk in the bathroom and Ivy gets her to open up just enough to engage in bathroom graffiti against her attacker.

So little was required to free her enough to speak at all but she has passed through almost the whole school year with no one noticing or caring enough to reach out.

Suffice it to say, the ball is rolling and Melinda is finding her way back to the world by the end of the book. It's a great ending, redemptive, realistic, and hopeful.

But this book is not the story of a rape. It is the story of an epic fail on the part of a community to recognize Melinda's crisis and try to understand instead of force her to conform.

I will absolutely recommend this book. I will recommend it because it is a great read, compelling and funny. I will admire it for being important in spite of those things. And I will tell anyone who thinks it should be banned that I think that is a great idea. That way, more people will read it.