Many parts

“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts…”

--Jacques, As You Like It (Act II, scene vii), William Shakespeare

[Nameless… wordless… swathed in black and creeping purposefully through the shadows… a killer stalked.  Silently, the hooded figure moved forward.  The quarry, unknowing, took a final breath at the cliff-edge.  At last, with a single cold-hearted shove, the murderer sent the victim plunging to certain doom.]

As the slayer strode remorselessly offstage -- as quickly and purposefully as a four-foot-tall person can stride while wearing a sweatshirt that hangs well past her knees -- her hood slipped a bit, and one of her long blonde pigtails sprang out.

Last week, I was part of a small but appreciative audience who were treated to a theatrical smorgasbord of unprecedented oddness: namely, sixteen three-minute(ish) plays written, directed, and acted by children aged 8-15.

The performance was the culmination of my kids’ Spring Break Camp with Fairbanks Shakespeare Theater, and was therefore one of those Things Parents Have To Show Up For.  I expected it to be, at best, cute, and perhaps unintentionally funny.  I did not, however, think it would inspire any degree of artistic contemplation.  But after I watched one of my twin eight-year-olds send a fellow actor to his purported demise, I began to wonder.

The audience giggled, of course.  I did too.   I simply couldn’t help it.  But I knew, in my heart, that Lizzy, the most diminutive of all sixteen playwright/thespians, was not trying to be funny.  She was being, wholeheartedly, The Mysterious Killer.

“All the world’s a stage…”

Acting has always tempted and intrigued me, although I’ve never had much success with it.  As a ten-year-old, I longed to follow in my big sister’s footsteps and earn a lead role in the school play.  I didn’t.  Instead, I was given a green pointy hat and placed among the ignominious horde of awkward elves on the rickety risers at the back of the stage. 

By high school, I was too intimidated by the apparent coolness and popularity of the theater crowd to seriously consider signing up.  Besides, I was busy with the math club and the track team. 

Math meets and track meets did not garner much in the way of audience. Not that it was really an audience I wanted – certainly not in my teen years, when being entirely invisible seemed far more appealing than being noticed.  No, what appealed to me about theater – and what still does – is the idea of being someone else, while still, enigmatically, being myself.

“…and all the men and women merely players …”

Looking through the Spring Break theater program, I noted that Molly was playing the role of “Mother” in two plays, and “Chatty Kathy” (a talkative young woman vying for the hand of a prince via a jump-roping contest) in a third.  Her twin, meanwhile, in addition to playing the nefarious (and seemingly motiveless) murderer, had garnered roles as a boy who befriends a dragon, and as a monster who devours children in their beds. 

I knew that the camp instructors had set things up such that each child, regardless of age or gender, could audition for any role he or she wanted.  Thus, the program reflected, at least to some degree, the parts my kids had chosen to play.  That fascinated me – because, what roles, real or imagined, do any of us choose? 

I’ve never had the luxury of choosing a theatrical role, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t tried to find myself in the roles assigned to me. This past summer, I helped out with Fairbanks Shakespeare Theater’s annual outdoor production.  It was the third time I’d done so.

The first time, years back, I was part of all the crowd scenes in Julius Caesar, including the bludgeoning of an innocent poet.  While I’m not actually in the habit of bludgeoning poets, no matter the odiousness of their doggerel, the role did make me think more deeply about what can happen – and why -- when mob-madness takes hold.

In my second Shakespearean foray, I was assigned to be a dancing shepherdess.  Yes, really.  Dancing.  Also, giggling, flirting, and singing, in a shepherdess-y dress and hair ribbons.    And you know what?  It was hugely fun.  Part of my psyche (unbeknownst to everyone, including myself) actually enjoys giggling, flirting, and -- heaven help the audience -- dancing and singing.

This year, I gathered props, mended costumes, and spent a couple of scenes onstage in a non-speaking role as a “forester”.  There wasn’t much skill required, but in every tech rehearsal and dress rehearsal and each of the show’s thirteen performances, I pretended to be a stalwart member of a down-to-earth woodsy cadre.  I pretended to be terrified of the knife-wielding Orlando.  I pretended to be amused by the banter of my betters, touched by the plight of an exhausted old man, and fascinated by the ruminations of the melancholy Jaques: 

“…they have their exits and their entrances …”

Rather than merely pretending, though, I decided to find the corner of my brain that really, truly, was intrigued by this speech.  As I sat on the stage – which usually meant sitting in a dirty, frigid puddle, because it never stopped goddamn raining last summer – I let my heavy ragged brown dress fall haphazardly around my booted ankles, and I wondered. 

I wondered about the roles we assign ourselves, and the roles we are assigned by others, and how they differ.  I pondered to what degree we really get to be the directors of the ongoing improv shows known as “our own lives”.  I speculated as to what roles my friends, my family, or my kids might cast me in.  I questioned my interpretation of the roles I already play – mother, scientist, outdoor enthusiast, wife, writer, professor, activist, friend, daughter.  I contemplated what other (astonishing, rewarding, hilarious, shocking) roles I might be capable of playing, were I ever to assign them to myself.

Some of these same questions floated back into my head, as I watched sixteen kid-crafted plays unfurl on stage last week. The participants in the Spring Break camp varied widely in their acting and writing abilities, but I found myself more interested in their intent than in their skill.  What iconic roles did they create and fulfill?  Why did the plays include seven mothers (no, eight – I forgot the mother dragon), and only two fathers?  Why were all the parents (even the dragon) so bland, dysfunctional, and naysaying?

Lizzy was not the only kid whose roles reached far outside the realm of the predictable.  The iconoclastic eleven-year-old daughter of my good friends (whom Lizzy blatantly looks up to) was cast as a delightfully spacey father in Molly’s play, as well as a dashing (if argumentative) Romeo.  Then there was a boy – he looked to be about eleven – who put on a lilac wig and a skirt to play the part of “Pretty Lulu”.  I kind of loved that boy. 

Ever since Robert Rosenthal’s 1964 classic classroom experiment showed that merely telling teachers that some (randomly selected) children had great potential caused actual increases in IQ in those kids, study after study has likewise demonstrated that expectations – and the roles we are assigned based on those expectations – deeply impact our reality.  Just knowing this, and having the tiniest inkling of the terrible injustices that it engenders, chafes and angers me.  If the whole world says you’ve got to play the part of “adorable little girl” or “suspicious black teenager” or “skinny white boy who definitely shouldn’t put on a skirt and jump rope” it’s all too easy to just say, Yeah, sure, that’s who I am.  And… that’s who I’m not.

Over the course of a single airplane journey this winter, Lizzy was off-handedly called “Princess” by three different strangers.  All of them were, I’m sure, entirely well-meaning, but I longed to correct them. That little girl in slightly grimy old jeans is not a princess.  Really.  Trust me on this one.  Clearly, each of these men (they were all men) had badly miscast my kid in their personal stage-plays. 

But, to be fair, perhaps I’d miscast them in my own.  I’d assumed, with a shocking lack of creativity, that Guy #2 was “Bored Fiftyish Male TSA Agent”.   But who was he, really?  What if he also played a secret nighttime role?  Perhaps, mentally, I should have called him, “Princess” too. Yes, I’ve removed my laptop from my carry-on, Princess.  Yes, those are my shoes, thanks, Princess.

Maybe it seems frivolous – or even insulting – to imagine random strangers as clandestine drag queens, but I assure you I don’t intend it that way.  To me, humans are intriguing precisely because each of us can, and does, play so many roles.  My most fascinating and wonderful friends – the ones I long to spend more time with -- tend to be individuals who contain multitudes.  If you’ve worked as a nurse, a shipwright, a stay-at-home-dad, a mathematician and a gardener, you’re probably an interesting person to eat dinner with.  If I’ve seen you as word nerd, apple pie baker, guide-puppy caretaker, computer programmer, hiker, and gay-leather-fetish-gear-wearer, you are all the more human to me. 

“…and one man in his time plays many parts…”

Sixteen kids got up on stage last week, and my optimistic core rejoiced.  Yes, other people will always try to force roles upon us, try to direct us, try to limit us.  But, ultimately, we are all still our own writers, our own directors, and our own actors.   No matter where our name appears on the playbill, we all have many, many roles to play.

[Nameless… wordless… the four-foot tall murderer strode offstage, hoodie flapping at her shins and pigtails askew…]

Differently Hacked

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of cute little online lists purporting to offer “life hacks”: quick and easy low-cost tweaks that will save you time and energy. 

Sure, why not?  I’ll click on that.  I like quick.  I like easy.  I like low-stress.  Cheap is nice, too.  Last night, just before heading off to snow-bike 350 miles through the Alaska wilderness, Jay told me that "Everyone says you're the lowest-maintenance wife I could possibly have."  I'm not entirely sure how to interpret this comment, but I"m going to take it to mean that I’m just the sort of person who does lots of hacking. In, um, a totally complimentary sort of way, of course.

Somehow, though, the hacks on offer never seem to be precisely the hacks I am looking for.  For example, “When ironing a button-up shirt, flip it inside out to easily iron over the button side.”  I can see where this might come in handy, if I wore shirts with buttons.  Actually, I think I do own one of those -- but not an iron.  Wait, Jay has a ski-waxing iron.  Does that count? 

Speaking of irons, another hack tells me I can use my hair-straightener as a collar iron.  Also, I should organize my makeup with a magnetic board, and hang up a magazine rack in my bathroom to house my hairdryer. 

Hmmm. 

Nonetheless, I’m still pretty sure I’m just the sort of person who hacks her life, and always has. Thus, I’ve taken the liberty of putting together my own list of super-duper totally universally useful shortcuts.

1)      When you and your sister are fighting during your unsupervised after-school time and you snap the delicate foot off your mother's tiny mahogany end-table, just glue it back on with Elmer's glue, and strap it tightly with rubber bands.  Remove the rubber bands five minutes before she gets home.  Tell her about it thirty years later. 

Hi, Mom. See?  No one really looks at table legs.

2)      When you walk a couple of miles to your high school on a Saturday morning to take the SAT, and you're so incredibly prepared that you neglect to bring anything with you -- including three sharpened number two pencils, or in fact any pencil at all -- just quickly search the curbside gutter area.  Look, there’s one.  You’re, like, totally ivy league material.

3)      Whenever a pesky black fly or mosquito has snuck inside your head net, but your hands and arms are entirely covered with semi-liquid mud, catch the insect with your tongue, and swallow it.  Problem solved.

4)      When the engine dies on your friend's VW bus because the wiring has shorted out, re-insulate it by wrapping it in one of the condoms he conveniently seems to keep in the glove box.  Ask no questions.

5)      Toilet won't flush at the Greyhound rest stop?  Small horde of women upset?  Quickly lift off the lid of the tank, plunge your arm in shoulder-deep, and use a twisted paperclip to reconnect the handle arm to the chain that lifts the flapper.  Stare back at all the women who are now staring at you.  You’re welcome, ladies.

6)      Has your landlady’s mentally handicapped son just accidentally cut a hole in a plastic cistern pipe with a machete, causing hundreds of gallons of gravity-fed water to start fountaining into the house foundations?  Just tightly wrap the pipe in an old bicycle tube. 

7)      When you’re planning to travel from Fairbanks Alaska to suburban New York via two planes and three trains as a solo adult with twin toddlers, buy two umbrella strollers for $14.99 each at Walmart.  Make Velcro straps to attach the strollers side by side -- but with one several inches in front of the other, so the wheels don’t lock.  (Note: when you’re wheeling two exhausted children through Grand Central Station while wearing a massive purple backpack holding all of your collective luggage, be sure to apologize to everyone you inadvertently whack.)

8)      Need to shatter the vertical stack of frozen poop that forms in your outhouse after several months of Alaskan winter? Try using a four foot long 18-pound crowbar!

9)      Are you cross-country skiing for 30 or more hours straight?  Keep your mp3 player well stocked with audio books, and stuff the player in your bra so that the twenty-below-zero chill doesn’t sap the battery life.  [Note: you might possibly want to avoid listening to The Hunger Games while alone in a dark, remote forest at 3 a.m.]

10)   On any mornings when you happen to be walking half a mile to the school bus stop with your first graders at 56 degrees below zero, keep things lively and nutritious by putting a plastic spoon in each child’s double-mittened hand, giving them each a small bowl of piping-hot oatmeal, and challenging them to see who can eat it before it freezes solid.

11)   Are your feet cracking open and bleeding at multiple locations from the ceaselessly dry air?  Try duct tape. 

12)   Duct tape. 

13)   I’d add more, but from here on in, the answer is still going to be duct tape.

Weeding out the Alaskans

The election results rolled in.  An announcement was made.  I shared a few grins with my community-mates around the dinner table.  And my fifteen-year-old friend, seated across from me, rolled her eyes, and sighed.  “The adults just ruined everything,” she deadpanned.

Of course we did.  We legalized pot.  Within a few months, any dorky middle-aged mom or dad in Alaska would be able to get stoned.  So. Not. Cool. 

I couldn’t help enjoying my young friend’s impressive command of irony, while at the same time hoping that perhaps her words held a delightful kernel of truth.  I have two eight-year-olds, both of whom were sitting right there at the table.  Obviously, I don’t want my third graders to start toking any time soon, but I kind of assume that – like fine wine, cheap beer, or Starbucks lattes --  pot is something they’ll try eventually.  If and when that time comes, I’d rather that the experimentation be done with safety, confidence, legality, and well-reasoned curiosity than via sneaking, lying, peer pressure, or a desperate desire to be part of the “in” crowd.  In short, I am definitely in favor of legalization, but I’m also definitely cool with pot not being cool.

Both before and after the election, I heard plenty of opining from both sides of this contentious issue.  This past Monday, the day that the law finally took effect, the hubbub resurged.  I tuned in with half an ear.  But, quite frankly, much of what I’ve heard – both pro and con – seems overwrought, overstated, or outright flippant.  On the anti side, there’s hand-wringing about whether we’re tacitly telling children that smoking marijuana is, like, a super-fun hobby.  Meanwhile, much of the pro-pot talk comes in the form of tongue-in-cheek humor from adults who are “sure looking forward to trying pot for the very first time”. 

Then there’s me.  I’m a liberal, commune-dwelling, hippie-looking type who spent more than two years of her youth serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Jamaica. Predictably, I am staunchly in favor of legalizing marijuana, and certainly voted in accordance with that opinion.  Personally, though, I don’t really like the stuff.

I know it sounds like I’m letting down my earthy team, but, for me, ganja is just not that much fun.  I’m not saying I’ll never ever in my life try it again, but the handful of forays I’ve made, spread across decades, have been disappointing. Moreover, I don’t much enjoy hanging out with stoned people.  In observing the effects of pot on others, I’ve noted that it makes them slow, forgetful, a bit silly, a bit stupid, and prone to thinking that they are much, much more profound than they actually are.  Maybe it should come as no big surprise that when stoned myself, I too become slow, forgetful, stupid, and probably remarkably un-profound.

I know that for many, pot makes them relax, in a deeply happy kind of way.  I can understand the appeal.  I’m not really a Type A person, but even so, the ravages of the modern era do sometimes leave me twitchy around the edges.  Feeling deeply relaxed would be lovely.  The problem is, when I’m feeling slow, forgetful, and stupid, I can’t relax. I’m such a knee-jerk intellectual that if I lose what I perceive to be my sharp scientific sensibilities, I feel like I’m losing the core of my being.  This is not a good feeling, even if it comes via a pan of delicious brownies.

I’ll accede to the fact that the pro-pot debaters have many good points on their side.  Marijuana is safer and less addictive than cigarettes, has no lethal dose, has some positive medicinal uses, and doesn’t induce violent behavior the way alcohol can.  I knew all these things before I ever tried it. I also knew pot would temporarily mess with my head -- probably in a good way but maybe in a mildly bad way -- and that it wasn’t precisely good for my lungs.  I weighed the possible pros and cons.  I made an informed choice.  What I knew, in a nutshell, is what I want my kids to know: the truth.

Obviously, they don’t need to make choices about marijuana, alcohol, caffeine, or sex while they are still in the third grade.  That’s what parents are for.  But parents are also for teaching.  Not just teaching over-simplified yes-or-no answers, but teaching kids about the world the way it really is.  Backstory.  Context.  Nuance.  Moderation.  Judgment.  Choices.

Of course, “yes” and “no” are easier.  I get that.  It’s a lot easier to say, “No, we never eat dessert first” than to admit that, once in a blue moon, chocolate chip cookies for breakfast might be fun.  Trying to explain to eight-year-olds why they see grownups smoking -- despite the fact that smoking can kill you -- is kinda complicated.   Explaining to little kids why anyone would EVER want to have sex is challenging, and parsing the finer points of consent, communication, enjoyment, safety, and empowerment is even more complex -- but if you don’t?  Seriously, if you don’t?   Likewise, fully explaining addiction, drunkenness, and why Prohibition was such a flop is a long conversation, but it’s a necessary one.

My teenaged dinner-table friend has a preternaturally well-developed sense of the ironic.  She’s also an athlete, a go-getter, and a highly academic individual.  I suspect that she’s never actually tried pot – but if she has, I’m not in the least bit worried about her.  Nor am I worried about the example that she may or may not be setting for my own children, who listened attentively all the while.  All three of these kids, whether they wanted it or not, have now heard a heck of a lot of conversation about marijuana from middle-aged, knowledgeable, and hopefully REALLY uncool adults. 

Survey says...

Well, gosh.  That was fast. 

I posted a bunch of just-for-fun survey questions on Facebook last night, and said I’d start sharing results when I got at least 25 responses,.  I guess that means… now.  However, I’ll update this post as needed, so please do keep on responding to the first two sets of questions, which are here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/J7GDBWB
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WBH5C8X

This is not in any way a scientific survey.  The results below pretty much prove that my friends and acquaintances are a delightfully skewed bunch (who are too busy peeing in the ocean to be bothered to watch the Superbowl). 

These questions may seem a bit random or unimportant. (Silas Marner?  Crème brûlée?) That’s okay -- this is just for fun. Besides, I hope to do this again, if it proves popular, and I don’t want to hit all the Really Big Questions in the first batch.

All your answers are completely anonymous – to me, too. Anyone can participate, so go ahead and share, if you feel like it.  Also, feel free to suggest questions for future episodes.

Okay, a summary of responses from the first set:

You people really don’t give a crap about American football, do you?  I mean, 16% of you aren’t even American, and only 8% are actually going to watch the Superbowl.  Another fifth or so are showing up just for the chips.  I can’t argue with that.  

I also can’t argue with all the ocean-peeing going on.  All of us.  We’re like blood brothers, except, like, with pee.  In the ocean.  Well, except for that one poor willing-but-land-locked person.  Whoever you are, I kind of want to take you to a beach and leap into the surf with you, just so you feel included.

Everyone likes dessert.  Lots of it. Not one naysayer.  Mmm, mmm.  I guess I’m surprised to see that the winner (by a hair) was apple pie.  I mean, come on, 16% of you aren’t even American!  Who likes cheesecake and pie better than FUDGE BROWNIES?  Um, you do, I guess.  Okay. Be that way.

Gender.  Interesting.  About a third of you have never even casually considered wanting to be the opposite sex.  But among the other 2/3, there’s a huge skew toward women wanting (casually or more seriously) to be male -- 50% of total responses.  Only 11% of responses were from males who ever thought it might be nice to be female.  I could charge off on a tangent here about the relative value placed on each gender by societal... but, no, no.  I won't.  No one of either gender seriously considered (or effected) a sex change.

How do you like work?  Well, you're pretty happy, and that makes me happy.  Since you like pie so much, here’s a chart for you:

 

Religion.  Okay, here’s proof that my friends are a radically atypical bunch.  A whopping one seventh of my friends are part of an organized religion.  The rest of us… not so much. 

Friendship.  Okay, maybe I belabored this, with four whole questions, none of which was particularly fun or titillating, but I was truly interested.  Do we have enough close relationships in our lives?  A lot has been written lately on the subject.  And, survey says…  many of us do, but the majority do not.  Two thirds of us have only one or two people in our “inner circle” (people key to our existence, whom we see pretty much every day), and an additional 12% have no one in this group.  When it comes to close friends (people you can talk with in an open and relaxed manner, and whom your spend time with, communicate with and/or think about at least once a week), the bulk of respondents had fewer than three (28%) or 3-5 (52%). 

Okay, so we’re not super close to large numbers of other people, but maybe we don’t want to be?    Well, yes and no.  Here are the responses showing whether folks would like to have more people in their inner circle and more close friends, respectively.

So… maybe some (most) of us need to get off Facebook and go have lunch with a buddy?  Or hold a hug-fest?  Or, um, something. . .

Thanks for playing, everyone.  I’ll leave it at that, for now.  More updates coming shortly.

Okay, here’s the scoop on Part II :

You’re supremely intellectual and well read, you dwell far above the physical plane, and you… well, you kind of get around…

Seriously, I was fascinated by these results. 

It was no surprise that most of us prefer a President or Prime Minister or whatever to be intelligent -- with honesty second and kindness third -- and that we don’t give a damn whether he or she is funny, strong, or good looking.  Likewise, I wasn’t surprised to find that most of us are looking for friends who are fun, honest, kind, and intelligent (in that order, but all very close) with fitness and hotness not even on the radar.   

But I was a bit startled to see how we ranked ourselves.  A third of us placed “intelligent” first, and another third put it second; it topped the list overall.  Beauty, meanwhile, was not only dead last, but was ranked either last or second-to-last by 93% of responders.  Perhaps even more startlingly, only 7% of responders placed “physical strength, skill, or endurance” anywhere in the top half of the list – despite the fact that 11% of the group bikes “obsessively” and another 21% bikes “a lot”.  Nonetheless, by our own report, we’re a bunch of ugly, unfit (but relatively kind, open, and funny) nerds. 

And then there’s the question of what we’re looking for in a partner.  It isn’t looks or fitness.  I mean, it REALLY isn’t.  Almost ninety percent of responders placed beauty either last or second-to-last.  Same with physical strength, skill, or endurance.  It seems we’re looking for openness, honesty, and communication first; intelligence and kindness tied for second; and sense of humor and spirit of fun fourth. 

And how well do our actual partners match those ideal?  Well… mostly – except for the 21% who said, “somewhat” and the 7% who said, “Um... huh.  Funny thing, that.”  

Moving on to books -- we read a lot.  Five of the ten books listed topped 60% readership.  “Catcher in the Rye” and “1984” were the most read, and “I, Claudius” and “Silas Marner” were the least read.  But “I, Claudius” was also the most popular, percentage-wise, with 4 out of 5 of us enjoying it.  “Moby Dick” was least popular, with a 40% approval rating. 

Books read

Books enjoyed

 Finally, we get to the sex questions.  Here, have some more graphs:

Number of partners

To be honest, I was slightly surprised by the range of responses, and kind of pleased by the fact that three quarters of the group are happy with what they’ve got right now.  I won’t editorialize any further on this.