Every once in a while I am thunderstruck -- gobsmacked if you will -- by the overall change that the internet has wrought on our lives. It affects us on a grand scale of course, with real time world events, online banking, and a constant stream of ADHD via Twitter et al. But sometimes I am still awed by the effect it has on the little things, such as the unchecked arc of expectation that used to make up our daily lives.
Take, for instance, this story from my youth. It came up last night and I was hit with the realization that it never would have happened today.
Our story takes place in 1983. I am six. My family of five is embarking on a 2-day, 18-hour car trip starting in the fire ant infested bowels of Dallas, TX and ending with Jello Pudding Pops at our grandparents' house in Salt Lake City, UT. I am sure our car sucked, as these were the lean years. Personal Blu-Ray players hadn't been invented even if we could afford them. There was no infinite distraction of Game Boys or YouTube or streaming Netflix. All I could count on were 2 annoying little brothers guaranteed to make anyone crazy, and a motion-induced puke about three hours in. Awesome.
But wonder of wonders -- this trip had a new adventure built in! If we were good, and promised not to fight or breathe or ask to go to the bathroom for the whole trip, then we would make a detour at...Four Corners National Monument! (Quick aside: Maybe my poor parents didn't realize how crappy this stop would actually be. They grew up in a time that charts even lower on the thrill scale than my own childhood. My mom saw The Wizard of Oz for the first time on something like a 12-inch black and white TV. It's all about context.)
Cue my wild expectations. With no concept of Four Corners other than the unfathomable idea of being in four states at one time (just imagine!), I transformed this sad roadside attraction into a live-action version of the "It's a Small World" ride. I would tap this stop for all it was worth; wandering from state to state, eating a giant caramel apple, chatting with the abundant local children of one state before I moved on to make new friends in another. And I was fairly sure these kids would ply me with gifts indicative of their local culture. I held my breath, and my urine, and aimed my hopes at unattainable heights.
So we loaded into the car. And we drove. And...finally...we arrived!
Imagine my enchantment.
"FourcornersMonument". Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FourcornersMonument.jpg#mediaviewer/File:FourcornersMonument.jpg
I know, right? Even the picture radiates heat, boredom, and the deafening silence of wind. And this picture was taken post-1992 renovation, so it was even more rundown when I was there.
My sad six-year-old self took one look at what Four Corners actually entailed, burst into tears, and refused to get out of the car. The rest is family history.
I will say, with absolute certainty, that this never would have happened to my kids. Not that I am a better parent - I'd probably use the same "attraction" on said drive if for no other reason than to extract myself from the car, escape the constant chatter of two competing video players, and snap an appropriately ironic picture for Facebook. No, this wouldn't happen now because my 5-year-old would be able to see Four Corners via a simple Google Image search (like the one I did to find the picture above), realize how bogus the stop would be, and choose to focus on his Transformers instead. Tears averted.
But my story isn't unique. I'm not the only one who suffered from ideas born in a time when ignorance fueled imagination. Take this tale from 1996. I'm 18 years old, the world is still a few years shy of widespread internet use, and my family takes their first real vacation to the Bahamas. (Which beats the pants off of Four Corners, by the way, and was unlike anywhere I'd ever seen.)
While on said vacation, my mom and I met a local woman who was enchanted to learn that we were from Denver. (Who wouldn't be, right?) It turned out that her church group would be traveling on a ministry trip to Denver at the end of that year. "The Mile High City!" she marveled, "Aren't you ever scared that you're going to fall off?"
Wait. What?
Living at sea level, on a flat little island in the ocean, the poor woman had absolutely no concept of elevation. We tried to explain, but words don't do justice when what you picture in your head probably looks a little like this:
and reality looks a lot more like this:
Cue the crushing disappointment.
I don't have any big wrap up here, just a weird nostalgia for ignorance that might have been. And also this warning: If you visit Denver any time soon and happen to lose your footing, try to fall wheat-side.
WARNING: This is one of those "F-bomb" posts that I refer to in the "About" section to your left. If you aren't into F-bombs, then you can skip this and go HERE to read about that time I made jam. The pictures are pretty, and it's good jam. I just pulled one out of the freezer this morning. And now, for the rest of you, a blog in F major.
I am a self-proclaimed genius. And like most self-proclaimed geniuses (geniusi?) I am also an expert. An expert on what? Glad you asked. I am an expert on your life.
That's right folks, after knowing you for five years, five months or five minutes, I am the kind of expert who feels totally at ease doling out unsolicited advice on what books you would enjoy, the type of supplemental formula your finicky baby would probably stomach, the color that would look good in your guest room or on your wooden stairs (hey, Kate), and how many chickens you could probably fit into your small urban backyard.
Not only that, I am really in tune with the bigger questions. Want to change careers? Come and see me, I'll have a dozen suggestions. Need to organize your living room or downsize your belongings? I can point you towards a darling book and a killer website. Need to know how to better communicate with your spouse or child? Step up friend, this font of knowledge is here for you.
Wondering how I have any friends left? Yeah...me too.
When advice is solicited, I do love to help out a pal. I mean, who doesn't have opinions on how their friends should be living? As a people, we make a thousand judgments a day about the choices of others, and it's okay. How else would we know where to position our own lives if we didn't have the barometer of our friends', family's and even total strangers' decisions to test out changes in the atmosphere? A judgment in this sense isn't a negative, it's a necessity. And when a sentence begins with, "Hey, I could really use some help with..." then we are well within our rights to tap those everyday thoughts and let the opinions flow. But sometimes, yes sometimes, I open my mouth and out pours a flood of advice that was neither asked for nor, most likely, appreciated. It is at these times that I would do well to heed the voice in my head, which is saying (not too quietly), "Hey! Danielle! Shut the fuck up."
Seriously, self, do us all a favor and give those thoughts a rest. No one likes a know-it-all. (The irony of making this statement in the form of a public blog is not lost on me.)
If you are at all like me, wouldn't you also benefit from a nice round of Shut The Fuck Up? Or, as my family says, Shelta.
Quick detour: When we were young, my uncle lived with us for a while one summer and worked construction. The guys on the job were always telling each other to "shut the fuck up," as good natured young fellas will do, but this wasn't really appropriate job site language. As a result, "shut the fuck up" was shortened to the colloquial "shut the." When my uncle was relating this story to my parents, one of my little brothers (who were totally interchangeable at the time) misheard and asked them all what "shelta" meant. And from that day until this, "shelta" has been my family's loving way of telling each other to zip it.
So, how do I move forward with this newfound self-awareness? As an opinionated thinker who is constantly mulling over the activities going on around me, I'm not going to change my core self. I wouldn't want to. I like that I'll never be at a loss for a position in a lively debate, and truth be told, I'll probably always be trying to get you to read the last great thing that I read (Wiley Cash, A Land More Kind Than Home). But when you come to me as a friend and want to share a story or thought about your life, or we are just hanging out with our kids on a random afternoon, I can find a way to keep my personality intact and also refrain from telling you what you should do.
In order to keep myself on track I have created a mantra, complete with special font and faded overlay, that is directly influenced by the motivational posters found in break rooms across America.
I should have added a fourth: Occupy your mouth with food or drink. Until I master these new skills, perhaps we should only meet up for Happy Hours?
I make no secret of the fact that I live in a lovely community suffering from a longstanding invasion of ignorant asshats (see HERE). So, I should not have been surprised by the most recent local activity but it has indeed caught me off guard. Why did I expect more? Because this issue involves the children in our county and their health.
Graphic courtesy of http://www.schoolnutritionandfitness.com/
Douglas County School District has become the only district in the state of Colorado to opt out of the Michelle Obama-championed new federal student lunch guidelines at the high school level. What a distinction! While I love the general idea of bucking the system and taking a stand, this opt-out represents one of the worst decisions that our should-have-been-voted-out-there's-always-next-time school board has had a hand in.
In response, I had a whole blog planned on the history of school lunches, the current guideline updates, and ways to embrace the healthier changes and fight childhood obesity while teaching our kids to enjoy a balanced meal. I'm going to skip that though, in favor of a Q&A, in which I cast the school board/naysayers in the roll of Inquisitor, and myself as the Voice of Reason. (This casting is totally biased, of course, but that's a perk of writing your own blog.)
A quick background and some resources, if you are into things like research and fact checking:
INQUISITOR: The government is overstepping its bounds by dictating the composition of school lunches. What's next? Will we be forced to investigate and evaluate the sack lunches kids bring in the door?
VOICE OF REASON: Public schools are subject to government oversight. With government funds, comes government accountability. This is why DCSD lost its eligibility to be reimbursed for free and low-cost school lunches when it decided not to participate in the new school lunch program. But you know that. And I'm sure you weighed that estimated $167,000 yearly reimbursement (not too many poor kids in Douglas County!) against the $3M a year in revenue that the school district takes in from its in-house Subway franchises. Nope, not even Jared and his giant pants can make Subway sandwiches worthy of our kids in the eyes of the federal guidelines, so losing those fast food chains would have been a hit to the ol' pocketbook.
What was the other part? Oh yeah, government oversight of kids' sack lunches. That's kind of an inflammatory argument based on nothing, right? Did Rush put you up to this? There is no precedent or law that prohibits parents from feeding their kids a bucket of Cheetos if they want to. Being food stupid, on a private level at least, is totally in alignment with federal regulations. Phew!
INQUISITOR: The guidelines are too strict. Our chef made a pizza that adhered to the guidelines and the kids hated it. And his burrito had to be created in miniature in order to comply. What do you say to that, huh?
VoR: Who decided that our kids need foods like pizza, burritos, cheeseburgers and fries in their daily lunch? Because they like them? If we based our children's diets on what they liked, my kids would eat nothing but macaroni and cheese and Whoppers malted milk balls for dinner. Stop luring kids to the lunch line with empty calories covered in melted cheese. Here's a crazy thought: don't serve pizza. At all. The menus aren't set by the new regulations, just the guidelines. So, and I'm just spitballing here, what if the PTO sponsored a school-wide recipe contest, kids and parents could get involved, and there could be a taste-testing night to raise money for the school? Winning recipes, with nutritional information, could be handed over to the district chef and/or school lunch supervisor and incorporated into the lunch menu. Too crazy? You'd rather stick to selling wrapping paper? Okay, then take ten minutes, harness the power of social media, and call out for help from the world of food and mom bloggers. Provide them with information on cost stipulations and nutritional content per serving and see what those wacky kitchen creatives come up with. Or google it. Someone has probably already done this.
INQUISITOR: Just because you give a kid an apple, you can't make him eat it. We have the healthiest trash cans in the state - the kids are throwing away more than they eat!
VoR: Until healthy lunches are the new normal, there is going to be a learning curve. Remember turning 21? No? That's because you were blackout drunk. A natural reaction to your new access to the magical world of booze. But your liver couldn't keep up with that kind of routine for the rest of your life, so you adapted and started to drink in moderation at least most of the time. So it will be with our kids. As booze is to a hangover, so too is trashing your lunch to hunger. (Bonus lesson: This will also teach kids a natural consequence that is a direct result of their actions!) It will also help when you stop trying to feed students pseudo-cardboard, non-fat pizza. Again, pizza is now a treat in this new world and not a school lunch staple, so it can be delicious, gooey and full of fat outside of school bounds. For the school day let's find some new recipes, like hummus/cucumber/pita sandwiches for instance, and teach the kids about cucumbers. Involve them in the school garden. If there isn't a school garden, plant one! Seeds are cheap and the child labor is built in, which is part of the reason I myself had kids. I'm sure an inventive biology teacher can adapt a lesson on Mendel's genetics to be taught outside while the ninth graders weed the pea patch. Torn away from their classrooms and textbooks, the kids may actually listen and (holy shit!) become inspired.
INQUISITOR: For some kids, this is their only guaranteed meal in a day, and it is being wasted.
VoR: A truly hungry child will eat the healthy meal. A truly hungry child, who may not have access to fresh produce on a regular basis, will eat the apple and maybe take a second one as well. A truly hungry child needs the nutrition provided by the new guidelines, since a standard piece of pizza may fill their stomaches but leave them nutritionally starving.
INQUISITOR: Well what about our cooks? They aren't allowed to give seconds, so extra food goes right into the trash.
VoR: Come on, work with me on this one. Lunch rooms must adhere to strict food and cleanliness guidelines, which makes them perfect candidates for donating extra meals to churches and soup kitchens. All that takes is a little coordination and a phone call. If you are lucky enough to live in the Denver area, check out We Don't Waste. I'm pretty sure they'll take the call.
INQUISITOR: When I grew up, school lunches were delicious. Can't we leave well enough alone?
VoR: When you grew up, school lunches weren't competing with fast foods, and you only had 2 options daily, Take It or Leave It. "Foods" that can be found in current high school cafeterias weren't even invented when you went to school.
INQUISITOR: But what about a parent's right to choose without unnecessary government -
VoR: Enough! Enough with the justifications and the inflammatory what ifs. The Voice of Reason is going to lose her mind! Seriously, where is the common sense? Even the schools adhering to the guidelines are lobbying to get french fries to count as a vegetable and pizza sauce to count as a serving of tomatoes. If you used all of this loophole energy and transferred it into trying to make the system work, we could have nutritious foods in our schools, kids who have a greater knowledge of where food comes from and how it affects their bodies, and parents would have an ally in the age old battle of getting kids to eat broccoli. Is the new system perfect? Nope. But let's try it and then when we encounter hiccups work towards a logical solution rather than writing off the whole system as broken and tossing it away. Let's not make this about economics and politics and instead refocus on the real message of raising a healthy generation of kids. If we as a community are going to unite and take a stand, let's work together to introduce our children to exotic vegetables and a new variety of spices instead of reaching a point of mutiny to protect their access to a five dollar foot long sub.
Damn. Being the only voice of reason in the discussion is exhausting. And angry-making, apparently. This issue makes me nuts. What do you all think?
