Manhood for Amateurs, Part 9: Freedom and Adventure

[Soundtrack for this post: Aimee Mann’s The Forgotten Arm; Tom Waits’s Small Change]

On to the eighth essay in Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs (for previous posts on Michael Chabon and MfA, click here). [n.1]

The Wilderness of Childhood

In this essay Chabon writes about growing up in his suburb in Maryland (I’m pretty sure it’s Columbia, a planned community outside of Baltimore), specifically how he and the other kids used to roam his neighborhood and the nearby woods. He also talks about how things have changed, and how his kids, and pretty much all kids these days, don’t get that experience.

I grew up in an exurb of Los Angeles that is completely ringed by hills that buffer it from the surrounding towns. It was a remarkably safe place in the ’70s, ’80s, and early ’90s when I lived there—it probably still is. It was pretty consistently ranked the safest city in America with a population over 100,000, and even when it wasn’t number one it was always still in the top three. [n.2] I don’t think I ever once thought I was in any sort of real danger when I roamed my town.

And roam I did. I have memories of walking with a friend to the closest shopping center when I was six. Maybe even five. And because my house was almost square in the middle of our expansive housing tract, the store was about a mile and a quarter away. Through the course of my childhood I made that walk countless times. We used to go to the liquor store or the pharmacy and buy baseball cards and bubble gum, and later the video store to rent movies and games. When we got a little older we’d ride our skateboards or bikes, and we’d go much farther. We’d go to the movies, or Target, or a restaurant, or the hills, or wherever. The park, the library, friends' houses. Sometimes I’d go alone but usually I was with at least one friend. Often we rode in a pack—a little bike or skateboard gang racing down the hills. It was great. We explored everything, we took care of ourselves, and we did it all the time. We even did it in the middle of the night, when our activities were almost never malicious but were often…impolite.

Those sorts of things are things I can’t imagine letting Carver do. Chabon talks about this, about how things have changed. But what’s changed isn’t the level of violence, or abductions—he cites Department of Justice numbers that say the frequency of these things hasn’t really changed all that much, and that abductions by strangers (possibly the biggest fear of many parents) are extremely rare [n.3] —it’s that the horrors are much better known; that parents are practically encouraged to develop deep, irrational fears about things happening to their kids; that we’ve developed a cult-like obsession with protecting our children to a level of absurdity. But he acknowledges that he’s like that too, that he’d never give his kids the kind of freedom he had.

This change is most unfortunate. This is at least the second post I’ve written about how I’m concerned that my children’s childhood is going to be different than mine and thus extremely disturbing. But I honestly think there’s more to it than just a “kids these days” and “the world is going to hell” thing. Chabon talks about how children wandering their neighborhoods and the nearby wilderness is a historical thing that pretty much every generation so far has shared. And I think that’s true. My grandfather and father were raised in very different places (my grandfather in depression era Prescott Arizona, my father in post-war Los Angeles), but they still shared a similarity in their childhoods that were rooted in parentless adventures. My dad used to tool around his town on a Flexi Flyer or Flexi Racer and was in near constant peril of smashing into or under a moving or parked car. He has stories of riding his bike around town, going fishing, sand skiing, heading down to the beach, et cetera et cetera, without a hint of parental involvement. Much of my childhood was the same. I sometimes liken it to the movie Stand By Me—it was always a group of kids making their own adventures, heading out on their own quests, walking down railroad tracks out in the middle of nowhere, with no adults involved (or even informed). [n.4]

These parentless adventures were invaluable in creating independence, developing problem solving skills, socialization, and so on. I have been a fiercely independent person since I was about 13, and while I was a child in many ways for many years after that, I was quite capable. I was very prepared to leave home at 18, and I’ve never felt like I needed help in getting by (except when it comes to dry-wall repairs and electrical work—that’s an inside joke). What happens to the kid who doesn’t have that? I don’t know; all the people I knew very well when they were in their late teens and early twenties had it.

So when I think about this issue I can’t help but think about whether it would be better to live in the suburbs, or a small town, rather than in the city. Everywhere I’ve lived in the last 10 years has been near a city center. I want to live in the city. But I’m not sure if living in the city is the best thing for my son. My wife grew up in the city of Chicago, but I don’t know enough about her childhood to discern how it compared to mine pros and cons wise. All I know is that just about everything I loved about my childhood was possible only because I lived in a safe exurb. But I also don’t really know what I was missing by not being in the city as a child. So I don’t know.

But even if we were to move to a suburb or exurb or small town, would it even then be the same or similar to my youth? Or are parents so paranoid even in those places that that lifestyle of unsupervised children roaming the streets and hills and woods is gone everywhere? I think it might be. Chabon mentions how one of his kids got a bike and wanted to ride around, but the only thing he was comfortable letting her do was to peddle to the store with him walking behind her. He also mentioned that there are two nine-year-old kids on his street (in Berkeley), one kid a couple houses up the street and another a couple houses down. These two nine-year-olds have lived a few houses from each other their entire lives and have never met. So he notes: even if he were to stifle his fears and let his daughter ride around on her bike without supervision, who would she ride with? No other kids are out there doing it.

Note 1: I just looked back and realized that it’s been more than a month since I wrote a substantive post (stuff other than lists of what I’ve been reading on line and words from Sutree). I’ve also been thinking that I’ve been dragging out these Manhood for Amateurs posts for way longer than I thought I would. I’m hoping to get through the rest of the posts much more quickly.

Note 2: Thousand Oaks, a neighboring town, and Irvine were always the other two.

Note 3: 115 total in 1999.

Note 4: Coincidentally, after I wrote this part of the post (it’s taken me a few sittings), I got an email from a friend who mentioned that he always thought of one of our mutual friends as the Corey Feldman character from Stand By Me of our group.

Manhood for Amateurs, Part 8: Legos

[Soundtrack for this post: Aimee Mann’s The Forgotten Arm]

[Beer for this post: Green Flash Brewing Company’s West Coast IPA]

On to the seventh essay in Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs (for previous posts on Michael Chabon and MfA, click here).

To the Legoland Station

In this essay Chabon talks about Legos (the toys). He has several insightful points here; most of them involve how Legos have changed and what that means. He notes that the Legos of his youth were offered in only a handful of colors and very limited shapes, while now there are a huge number of very specialized pieces and kits so you can build Tie Fighters, Formula 1 cars, fighter jets, and the like. The main point I took from this was that he was concerned that the proliferation of specialized pieces and the massive manuals necessary to construct a perfect Tie Fighter, etc, would kill creativity—it was no longer about building things from your imagination out of numerous rectangles but rather carefully constructing a pre-imagined item using provided directions. But he found that his fear was unfounded—his kids, in the end, used the special pieces in interesting and unusual ways, making unique and beautiful creative creations.

I enjoyed Legos when I was a kid, but I didn’t own many—I usually just played with my friend Chad’s when I was at his house or when he brought them to my place. Chad also had a huge box of Lincoln Logs that we loved to go to town with. The only toys of that sort I had were a big collection of Tinkertoys pieces. The Tinkertoys were my favorite, but I can’t say why. Tinkertoys are just awesome.

I never really understood the purpose of the special Legos kits where you were intended to use the pieces to build the planned and pre-designed object. The ones that attracted me the most were the Star Wars ones, since I was a big Star Wars nerd, but in the end I couldn’t figure out why you’d want to build a Lego Tie Fighter when you could just get a regular Tie Fighter toy. The whole point of Legos, for me, was that you could build whatever popped into your head. If you want a Tie Fighter, just buy a Tie Fighter (the price was almost certainly comparable)—then your regular Star Wars figures would fit in it, unlike the Legos one that would only fit little Lego dudes.

I’m happy to hear that Chabon’s kids used the special pieces in their own creative projects. Chad’s big mix-and-match set of Legos had a few weird, non-standard pieces, and we always found a place for them in our creations.

The Wikipedia page for Tinkertoys says that the inventors (who were from Evanston and originally displayed their new toys in Chicago!) created the toys to “allow and inspire children to use their imaginations.” And that’s what Tinkertoys did, and that’s what made them so cool.

Not to toot my own horn, but for someone who never really formally studied engineering, I am very capable or understanding mechanics and just generally figuring out how things work. There are many reasons for this, but I don’t doubt that the Legos, Lincoln Logs, and Tinkertoys played a part. I hope Carver enjoys them as much as I did.

Manhood for Amateurs, Parts 6 and 7: Artwork

[Soundtrack for this post: The Australian Open on TV]

[Beer for this post: Dark Horse Brewing Company’s Crooked Tree IPA]

On to the fifth and sixth essays in Manhood for Amateurs.

The Memory Hole

In this essay Chabon talks about throwing away his kids’ artwork. He says he keeps some of the better pieces, but throws most of it out. He also mentions how his parents kept very little of the art he created in his youth.

One of the first things that I think about when I think about this essay is: what did his kids think when they read it?

I have a hard time thinking that I’d ever want to throw away anything that Carver created. But I know the time will come, probably soon, when I will. Well, I might not want to throw it away, but I’ll realize that I need to. I’m kind of a hoarder by nature and we have too much stuff in our house already, so there’s no way we can keep every bit of art Carver makes. And even if we chose to, if we put it in bins and then put them in storage, what would be the point? Chabon says that the good stuff they keep just goes in a bin that goes in the attic and is never seen again. Carver, Anne, and I are probably never going to want to look at every single piece of art that Carver ever makes, so it would just sit there in the dark.

My mom has in her house a couple drawings I made in my early youth that she has framed. I love that they are there, and I love being able to see them, but I think having a few meaningful pieces is enough.

My dad maintains my “baby book” (his term), which now fills an entire armoire. And the thing is: what’s going to happen to it? When my dad moves on, it’ll be left to me to decide, and since I’m a hoarder who doesn’t like to throw stuff out I’m going to want to keep all of it. And then what am I going to do with it? It would inevitably just sit in some dark storage area. I’d probably prefer that it not be there, at least most of it. But I’d tell my parents: “Do not feel obligated to throw away my baby book stuff. Actually, don’t throw it out.” I could never encourage the destruction of evidence of my existence and testaments to who I am. Which is what that stuff is to me.

The Binding of Isaac

In this essay Chabon talks about watching President Obama speak at his election victory party in Grant Park. He has his five-year-old son on his shoulders. He’s caught up in the joy of the moment, but then he suddenly feels sorry for Obama’s daughters, for they are about to lose access to their father as they’ve known it. But then he feels sorry for Obama. And he talks about how a child’s want for his father’s attention is insatiable, and how all fathers abandon their children, in some small way, countless times.

First, I wonder if Carver is going to be mad at Anne and me for not taking him to the election night celebration (and, in case you don’t know us that well, it was a celebration for us too). We were about four miles away, holed up in our apartment. Carver was just shy of two months and I had no interest in fighting the masses to get into Grant Park that night while trying to pacify a two-month old. But part of me now really regrets not being able to tell him that he was there on that night.

I think a parent can be a positive influence even if they aren’t there all that often. I like to think that President Obama can be a fine father, and a fine example for his daughters, even though his new job undoubtedly keeps him extremely busy. I think the same can be true of military parents—even in absence their service can be a shining example. I think some sort of presence is required, but it doesn’t need to be constant. And I also think it is important to have happy and fulfilled parents, so if that means the parents need to tackle time-intensive jobs, then so be it. Setting an example is just as important as being available.

Manhood for Amateurs, Part 5: Drugs

[Soundtrack for this post: The White Album]

[Beer for this post: Port Brewing Company’s WipeOut IPA]

On to the fourth essay in Manhood for Amateurs—it’s called:

D.A.R.E.

In this essay Chabon talks about talking with his kids about drugs. He admits to having smoked quite a bit of marijuana between 1980 (his freshman year of college) and 2005, and much of the essay involves the various issues involved when a former, long-term drug user is trying to encourage his kids to stay clear of drugs. [n.1]

I have never done an illegal drug. Not once. I have never “experimented”—I have not had the slightest interest. I am convinced that my roommate Brian and I were the only people in our entire freshman dorm who did not smoke pot, and all the others not only smoked pot but they did it every single day. Along with Brian, my friends Chad and Gary, and my first girlfriend, Lianne, were also fiercely anti-drug. [n.2]

I don’t know why I have never had any interest in “experimenting” with drugs. My parents smoked pot well before I was born and well into my lifetime, a fact of which I was fully aware from a relatively young age. [n.3] They had also done other drugs, but I wasn’t so sure of that until more recently. One of my sisters also used drugs when I was young, and I was aware of it. I see that experience as having two possible effects: (1) either my exposure would make me more likely to try drugs myself; or (2) because my parents smoked pot and tried to hide it from me I’d develop an aversion to pot smoking. Obviously the first didn’t apply to me (though it did to a friend of mine), but I’m not sure how much the second applied either.

I’ve always been convinced that I am a D.A.R.E. [n.4] “success story.” I did most of my growing up during the ‘80s, a time when Nancy Reagan was telling us all to “Just Say No,” [n.5] D.A.R.E. was blossoming, and anti-drug after-school-specials seemed to be flooding the airwaves. I even went to a D.A.R.E. day-camp when I was 12. My young brain fully believed that drugs made you stupid, rotted your nose to the point that the divider between your nostrils ceased to exist allowing for disgusting tricks with tissues, and that drug users had all sorts of horrible, nightmarish experiences involving perceived spiders crawling all over their bodies, or young girls whoring themselves out, and so on. Some might use the term “brain washed.”

Aside from my parents, sister, and one friend, the only other people I knew who used drugs were schoolmates of mine who smoked so much pot that they did it at school. These people, “stoners” we called them, were invariably very stupid. So I could not help but deduce that either: (1) smoking pot made you incredibly dumb; or (2) only incredibly dumb people smoked pot. Either way, it would be an understatement to say it didn’t spark a desire in me to burn one down.

Chabon has this to say about the first time he saw someone (his mother) smoking pot (he was in his mid-teens):

“Nevertheless, smoking marijuana remained for years afterward nothing I had any interest in trying myself, not so much because I feared its effects or even because it was against the law but simply because I was a good boy, and as such I looked down my nose with a cosmic, Galactus-sized censoriousness at the kids I knew—stoners, burnouts—who smoked it.”

Now I would not usually call myself a “good boy,” but I can totally relate to this. I certainly have, and continue to, look down my nose with a certain censoriousness at most people I know who do drugs. I have a hard time with balancing this with my fierce libertarian ideas that those people can do whatever they like, and it has never bothered me to have friends or fellow dorm dwellers smoke a bowl right in front of me—to each their own. But I also think it’s dumb, and remain certain that it isn’t for me. And when it came to people I cared about, love interests in particular, the thought of them getting high has always been enough to gut me, emotionally.

I don’t know where this disdain comes from. There’s the illegality, but given that I freely break the law in at least one other context (I tend to view speed limits as loosely advisory), and also firmly believe that marijuana should be legalized, it would be strange if the illegality is what gets me. There’s also the mind-altering aspect, which has typically been something I disapproved of. I always viewed drug users as the weak who can’t deal with life, which is something at certain points in my life I would’ve considered one of the most damning things I could say about a person. But over the last year and a half, a time of much emotional strife in my own life, I have quite obviously self-medicated with alcohol, comfort foods, and self-pity, so you’d think I’d get off my high horse already [n.6]. Perhaps in this respect I’m like a Republican Senator—I see nothing wrong with drinking myself into a stupor [n.7], but I’ll be goddamned if I’ll condone some hippie drug.

Chabon and his wife decided in advance that when the drug conversation came up that they would be honest with their kids (though he does balk at telling his kids, when his son asked him how many times he smoked marijuana, that he has done it approximately one million times—he instead said “a number of times”). I’m not sure how my wife and I will address the drug conversation. Let’s just say that my wife’s experience with drugs is very different, perhaps even a near exact opposite, of mine. I’m not sure how I can be honest with my son about my ideas about drugs without saying things that he may construe as a direct attack on his mother. I will almost certainly have to qualify my old ideas that only dumbasses and weaklings do drugs, and my wife will have to come up with an explanation for why she did the things she did. I imagine we have several years before we have to get our story straight, but it’s something we’re going to have to work on.

Note 1: Chabon also says that 13 “is the age at which you begin to become fully aware of hypocrisy, contradiction, ambiguity, coded messages, subtexts; it is the age, therefore, at which you must begin to attempt to sort things out for yourself . . . .” I find the precision, and lack of qualification, in that statement to be odd.

Note 2: I have some truly excellent friends, and I’m convinced that my good taste (or good fortune) in friends has much to do with my relative success in life. But that’s a topic for another post.

Note 3: Note to parents, teens, and others: Spraying air freshener does not remove the odor of marijuana—it just makes it smell like marijuana and vanilla (or whatever bouquet the air freshener has).

Note 4: Drug Abuse Resistance Education.

Note 5: She even invaded one of my beloved sit-coms, Diff’rent Strokes:

Note 6: There was a time though, when I never would’ve considered ingesting anything mind-altering at times of grief and struggle—I firmly believed that I was supposed to feel what I was feeling, and drinking or using some drug would be a cop-out that would deny me what I was supposed to feel. I wish I had hung on to that.

Note 7: That’s not true.

Manhood for Amateurs, Part 4: Circumcision

[Soundtrack for this post: Have Yourself a Jazzy Little Christmas]

[Beer for this post: Victory’s Hop Wallop]

On to the third essay in Manhood for Amateurs—it’s called:

The Cut

In this essay Chabon writes about his decision to circumcise his second son. He debunks many of the arguments for why people circumcise their boys, but he nevertheless chose to have the procedure performed on his sons.

In case you don’t know, my wife and I have a son. So we too had to make the “to circumcise or not to circumcise” decision. Anne left it up to me, presumably because I’m the one with a penis. [n.1]

A friend of mine had a boy several months before Anne and I had Carver, and as far as I can tell they never doubted that their son would get “the cut.” I, however, struggled with it for a few months. My mom, who’s a nurse, sent me some literature about circumcisions with a note saying that if she had known more about it at the time, she probably wouldn’t have allowed me to be circumcised. Like Chabon, I have very strong doubts about the arguments made in favor of circumcision—they all tend to be bogus, as far as I can tell. Some say circumcision reduces the chance of getting certain cancers and infections. Others say that boys will be confused if they don’t “match” their father or brothers. I don’t buy any of it. On the other hand, people say circumcision greatly reduces the pleasure a man feels during sexual contact.

In the end I chose to have my son circumcised. Why? you ask. That’s a good question. Like Chabon, I find the practice to be insane, yet I subjected my son to it anyway. And I’m not even Jewish, unlike Chabon, so there was no religious reason. I’ll tell you why I did it though, even though it might be hard to believe.

I did it for him. I was concerned that he might miss out on some blow jobs if he weren’t circumcised, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to cost my son even one blow job.

You see, just about every boy I knew growing up was circumcised. So to me, early on, a complete penis was an oddity. [n.2] I have little doubt most of the girls and women I knew growing up felt the same way. I know for a fact that certain women I know find uncircumcised penises to be a major turn-off. While I recognize that there are undoubtedly women who prefer complete penises, they have been either nonexistent or at most a tiny minority in the group of women I’ve known. I assumed, rightly or wrongly, that the same would be true for my son. So I had him circumcised so his penis would fit in. (Ahem.)

But I wouldn’t do it again. While I don’t really regret having Carver clipped—I’ve heard people who claim it is an extremely traumatic experience, but I was with Carver within minutes after his procedure and he seemed to recover remarkably quickly—if we have another son I won’t have him cut. My reasons: (1) I think it is absurd, yet the one reason I stuck with is that I didn’t want my son to have an odd penis. But the only reason it is odd in my (sub)culture, to the extent it is, is because of people like me. I now want to stop the madness. (2) While Carver's went smoothly, there is a degree of danger. There are stories about nasty infections and even boys losing their entire penis, which would suck, to say the least.

And as for the thing about it greatly reducing pleasure. All I have to say is: What? I don’t see why it needs to feel any better. It’s probably better that it doesn’t.

Note 1: It’s important that the presumably is before the because.

Note 2: An example: A friend of mine moved to a different town when we were just entering high school. He played on the football team there. One day he was talking with us, and said, “You know, Mexicans cut of the heads of their dicks!” I asked him to repeat what he just said. He explained that in showering and such he occasionally caught sight of his teammates’ penises, and how all of the Hispanic guys had snub-nosed members. I was in shock for a few seconds, before I realized that some of his teammates just weren’t circumcised. My friend didn’t know what a complete, natural penis looked like, and that what he thought was standard was in fact a modification.

Manhood for Amateurs, Part 3

[Soundtrack for this post: Flunk’s For Sleepyheads Only]

[Beer for this post: Southern Tier IPA (again)]

On to the second essay in Manhood for Amateurs—it’s called:

William and I

In this essay Chabon tells a story about how he is complimented in the supermarket for being a “good dad.” He talks about how the good dad standard is so different, and lower, than the good mom standard, and how fathers in the past had it even easier.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an experience similar to what Chabon recalls in his essay, how many times I’ve been stopped and praised for being a good dad when I’ve done, as far as I can tell, nothing to warrant comment (much less praise).

I’ve often thought about this double standard. The first time I really got it was when the three of us went to visit my mom for the first time since Carver’s arrival. My mom lives on the coast of Washington so we always fly into Seattle. On that trip we spent the night in Seattle at my aunt Merlee’s apartment, which we often do rather than tackle the four-hour drive on the same day as the flight. Carver was just shy of three months on this particular trip, and he still wasn’t sleeping much. My aunt’s apartment is all on one level and isn’t huge, so when Carver woke in the early morning, I figured I should take him somewhere so Anne, my mom, and my aunt could get a couple more hours of sleep. I took Carver to a Tully’s, which is a coffee shop chain similar to Starbucks, but much better. I got a coffee and bought the New York Times, and struggled trying to move my coffee and paper and get settled why carrying Carver. At some point one of the Tully’s ladies asked me something like this: “Oooohhhhh [spoken in that very sweet way that conveys that the speaker finds something adorable], are you watching the baby so mom can sleep in?” Yes. “OOOOoooohhhh [almost orgasmic], you’re such a WONderful dad! That is so sweet.” Almost from the moment she started asking, it was as if every woman in the coffee shop decided to eavesdrop and descend on me and Carver, cradling us in this ring of praise and adoration that seemed strangely tinged with lust. I knew that if it were Anne and not me no one would’ve even commented about her mothering. That was my first noteworthy experience with the parenting double standard, and I’ve benefited from it many more times since.

Chabon has this to say about how we as a society see mothering: “Good mothering is not measurable in a discrete instant, in an hour spent rubbing a baby’s gassy belly, in the braiding of a tangled mass of morning hair. Good mothering is a long-term pattern, a lifelong trend of behaviors most of which go unobserved at the time by anyone, least of all the mother herself. We do not judge mothers by snapshots but by years of images painstakingly accumulated from the orbiting satellite of memory.” Good fathering, by contrast, apparently just means sticking around and seeming to be content with very limited parenting responsibilities. In some subcultures, it seems good fathering simply means still being around by the time the child is born.

Chabon also has this line about his father’s parenting: “My father educated me in appreciating the things he appreciated, and in ridiculing those he found laughable, and in disbelieving the things he found dubious.” As a father and a son, I find that to be a remarkably apt description of fatherhood.

I have always thought that both of my parents were pretty good parents, but that’s based on an extraordinarily limited sample size. They’re both imperfect and a little nuts, but my guess is that that describes just about everyone. I don’t have any reasonable complaints.

I have worried about being a horrible father for about as long as I’ve recognized that I might someday be a father. When I was in high school I developed a theory that parenting styles skipped generations. I used my own family as an example. My paternal grandfather was, in my young eyes, a harsh, mean, and scary man, and thus probably a bear of a father. By stark contrast, my father was, at least in my eyes, understanding, kind, and laid-back perhaps to a fault. My theory was that my father didn’t want to be like his father, so he was much easier going. My fear was that I would be like my grandfather, because I had a nice father and didn’t appreciate what it was like to have a harsh father. By that time I could see parts of my grandfather leaking through me: a fierce temper and an occasional severe lack of patience with others.

It has become clear to me in the last 15 years that I will not be my grandfather, but I will not be my father either. I have my own still developing way, and while I rarely manage to meet my own standards for what I expect from myself as a father, I do recognize that I am, relatively, probably going to be pretty good at it.

Manhood for Amateurs, Part 2

I saw Michael Chabon last night. He’s touring to support Manhood for Amateurs and spoke at the Chicago Public Library. He read two pieces from the book, answered questions, and then signed books. I had a really nice time. Three notable impressions: (1) the guy can read, and by that I don’t just mean he’s literate, which of course he is, but that he really does a superb job reading his essays, possibly the best I’ve heard live; (2) he’s very funny and charming when answering questions and interacting with the audience; and (3) he’s very attractive in a sort of bookish “cute” way, I can see why the ladies would be into him, and why some gay men really wished he was gay. If he comes to your town, I recommend seeing him.

The Loser’s Club

The first essay in Manhood for Amateurs is called The Loser’s Club (I’d like to avoid spoiling the essays for those who haven’t read them, so I won’t do thorough summaries, but I’ve got to set it up, right?). He writes about the time when he was 10 and started a comic book club, complete with a newsletter that he did the layout for and typed using nothing but a typewriter (he even made columns and sidebars!). He rents a room at a community center and advertises the first meeting. His mom helps him set the room up and then leaves him there. Only one person shows up, a young boy, but he leaves almost immediately after seeing no one but a lone, lonely boy and his newsletters.

Carver and I visited my mom and sister and pretty much the entire maternal side of my family about two months ago. We drove into Neah Bay for Makah Days, my tribe’s annual celebration. As we were looking for a place to park, I saw a pair of kids running a lemonade stand in a very bad location, business wise. I pointed them out and asked my mom if she remembered the time my friends Chad, Sheri, and I set up a lemonade stand at the bottom of our cul-de-sac, which is quite possibly the least trafficked spot in the entire city. In the few hours we sat down there I think we saw one car, which did not stop, and one pedestrian who was nice enough to act excited about the lemonade and suggest he’d come back if he could scrounge up some money. My mom admitted, for the first time, that she hated it when we did “things like that,” admitting that she always knew they’d be horrible failures but also not wanting to be discouraging.

Chabon says that this failed comic book club meeting was when he began to think of himself as a failure, and that no one gets past age 10 without learning that the glory of success is always trumped by the pains of failure, that a criticism is not evened out by a compliment. But when I think about that lemonade stand, I don’t remember ever being disappointed. I don’t remember feeling like we failed. In fact, if memory serves, we actually did it again. Granted, we were under Chabon’s designated failure-recognizing age of 10, so maybe that had something to do with it. I certainly have a fear of failure now, and I’ve had it for a long time.

I had a birthday party when I turned six but didn’t have another until my dad decided to throw one for me when I turned 21. I never wanted to have a party, because I didn’t want it to fail. To this day I’m very unlikely to throw a party or host a dinner because I’m convinced no one will show, and it’ll hurt, it’ll be undeniable evidence that people don’t care about me. Without that evidence I can go on thinking otherwise.

While I have my means of trying to protect myself, flawed as they are, I don’t know what to do when it comes to my son—I certainly don’t want to raise another me. At this point I suppose the best thing to do is what Chabon’s mom did when she rented the room and helped him set up chairs, and as my parents did when they didn’t discourage my lemonade stand. I want him to try, to put himself out there when he’s ready, but I also can’t stand the idea of him getting hurt and becoming jaded, of his dreams being crushed.

My friend Matthew once mentioned to me how during a trip they took with a group of friends his son first experienced another person being consistently very mean to him, and how hard that was to watch. Now that I have a child of my own I know what Matthew meant, and when that day comes for Carver, when someone is cruel to him, it’ll break my heart. Which is why I’m worried about how to deal with his lemonade stand and comic book club aspirations. It’ll break my heart the first time life is cruel to him too.

Manhood for Amateurs

[Soundtrack for this post: Stan Meets Chet and Kill to Get Crimson]

I bought Michael Chabon’s Manhood for Amateurs last week. It’s a collection of essays about being a father, husband, and son. I’ve never read anything by Michael Chabon (pronounced, according to him, Shea like the stadium, Bon like Bon Jovi), but I really like the movie Wonder Boys, which was based on one of his novels. I heard him giving an interview on NPR last week and thought the book sounded like something I could learn from and perhaps identify with. [n.1]

I’ve read the first three or four essays and each one has either caused me to think back to my childhood or my experiences as a new father, and they’ve all sparked a desire to write down those experiences and the related stories. So that’s what I plan on doing. As I read through Manhood for Amateurs, I’ll post responses to the essays that cause a spark that leads to ignition.

But before I do that…

I’d like to comment on the back cover of Manhood for Amateurs. It contains “praise for Michael Chabon” in the form of six quotations. Here are excerpts from the first four: (1) “Probably the premier prose stylist—the Updike—of his generation”; (2) “He is one of the best writers of English prose alive” [n.2]; (3) “The best writer of English prose in this country”; and (4) “A prose magician.” My point, in case it isn’t obvious, is that HarperCollins must really like the word prose, or maybe reviewers feel like it is a mandatory buzzword when talking about Chabon. Either way, it’s ridiculous.

The Kingdom of Snow and Ghosts

Before I start with the stuff in the book, I’m going to begin with an essay that Chabon has up on his website (you can find it here). This essay is similar to the stuff in the book and it’s called The Kingdom of Snow and Ghosts. The gist of the essay is that when he was young he had five channels on his TV, received through “rabbit ears,” and he discusses how the change to the present’s hundreds of always-on channels is in some ways a loss for his kids and their peers. He talks about the incredible, in some ways marvelous, boredom that resulted from the dearth of programming options, and how kids will watch anything, no matter how bad, rather than nothing.

This might sound like a typical “kids these days” or “things were better back in the day” type essay, and maybe it is, but I don’t read it that way an that’s not what I want to focus on anyway.

The “kids will watch anything rather than nothing” thing really hit home for me. When I was young, say 12 and under, I would watch just about anything, even if it pained me. I remember watching Pink Floyd The Wall repeatedly with my sisters in my parent’s bedroom. I was probably seven. My sisters rented it and watched it three times in one day. I hated it. I had no idea what was going on and it bored me into a near coma-like state, yet I watched it with them. I watched it with them three times and bitched and complained the whole time. I could’ve left the room, I could’ve watched the other TV, I could’ve gone outside, I could’ve done countless other things, but I sat there and watched three times over a movie I absolutely loathed. I don’t know why I did it. Maybe it was a desire to try to get into what my older siblings were into. Maybe it was a fascination with the film even though I had no idea what was going on—I still recall the scenes with the children falling into the meat grinder and the bullets on the train tracks. Maybe I just wanted the company.

The same thing happened with the Little House on the Prairie. I hated that show too, but I still watched it. I even briefly got into the Young and the Restless one summer when my sister broke her leg and was more or less bedridden—every day I’d actively go into her room and watch it with her, even though (at least at first) I hated it.

Maybe it’s just nostalgia, but I think I agree with Chabon that there was something magical about that boredom, a level of boredom I haven’t felt since.

That’s not to say all I did was watch TV. I feel like a had a pretty idyllic suburban childhood, despite a one or two year period where I had a deep fear of being murdered in my sleep that required therapy (a topic for another post) and more than a few problems in my parent’s marriage that ultimately lead to divorce. I had a tight group of excellent friends, and we spent a great deal of time playing outside, running games of football or baseball at the top of my cul-de-sac, making M80-charged cannons in my backyard, playing hide-and-seek or freeze tag or “swords” or gun fighting. We also spent most summer days and evenings in my pool, sometimes only getting out long enough to eat. I also once built a very elaborate cat trap in my garage, something similar to what you put together in the game Mouse Trap, to catch stray cats that I thought were holing up in the garage. I actually caught a cat, which, considering my trap, bordered on miraculous (now that I think about it, I can’t help but wonder if my parent’s rigged it). We of course also played our fair share of video games, but as with the TV it never seemed like it got in the way of our more active fun.

Now that there is so much more TV programming—and the Internet with its social networking, online video, and all—I can’t help but wonder if it’ll reduce the amount of old fashioned (?) outside fun. When I was young we had cartoons available for an hour or two in the afternoon on weekdays and on Saturday mornings. Now you can watch cartoons whenever you want with the Cartoon Network and the kid specific channels out there, not to mention DVRs.

There’s something to be said for limited opportunities. I remember sitting in my friend Chad’s room when we were probably around seven or eight trying to record songs off of the radio. We’d have a tape in the deck and would sit there and wait for a song we wanted to come on and then we’d hit record. Once Chad was hoping to get a copy of Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust. I wonder how long he waited, how many songs he sat through that he didn’t know and didn’t care about before he got it, if he ever got it. I couldn’t imagine doing that now, and my son will almost surely never know what its like to have that experience. Within seconds he could find a copy on iTunes or even a video for the song on YouTube. My son will never know what it’s like to miss an episode of a TV show and have no way of finding out what happened, only hoping that it will be rerun sometime, most likely months later. He’ll never know what it’s like to stay up late enough to see the channel “sign off” with the Stars and Stripes waving proudly before turning into a wall of static. He’ll never know what it’s like to have to sit through 45 minutes of the inanities of the nightly news to catch his favorite team’s score or, worse, have to wait until the next day’s newspaper.

Perhaps in the grand scheme of things, being able to find out the Dodgers’ score in seconds on ESPN.com, or even “watch” the whole game on GameCast, compared to having to wait for the results in tomorrow’s newspaper, isn’t a huge loss. Of course in many ways it’s a big gain, but it is a change that will certainly have an effect on how he relates to sports and information in general. While I certainly appreciate being able to get my scores with a single click of my touchpad, I think there is absolutely something good lost with the forced waiting and patience, the anticipation, and it’s a loss to be mourned.

Note 1: About my use of “identify with” [Did I end my sentence with a preposition? So fucking what if I did.]: I initially wrote “relate with” but then wasn’t sure if it should be “relate to.” I did an Internet search, because I was too lazy to get up and get a book, but wasn’t satisfied with the results, [n.1a] so I had to get up and get my copy of Garner’s Modern American Usage. Garner—a man for whom I have a deep respect nearing reverence—calls relate to a “voguish expression,” which in Garner-ese is a damning pronouncement indeed. He links relate to to identify, and under identify he notes that identify in the sense of “to understand sympathetically or intuitively, esp. through experience” is “often disapproved of because when used in that way, identify is a VOGUE WORD—more specifically, a pop-psychology CASUALISM—bearing a nontraditional sense.” OH SNAP! and DAMN! He continues to say that a more conservative writer would simply use understand. But come on, understand doesn’t mean the same thing in this context, and I was too lazy to try to think of a different way to put it, so I went with indentify with. Deal with it.

Note 1a: I often do Internet searches when I’m looking for a quick answer about grammar or usage. The top results given by Google always contain English language forums where “non-native” English speakers discuss grammar, usage, words, et cetera. There are almost certainly all sorts of sample size problems here, but it makes me think that non-native English speakers work a whole lot harder at speaking English properly than most native speakers do.

Note 2: I think that would be better as “one of the best living writers of…” Don’t you? [n.2a]

Note 2a: Sorry, again, for the notes. Anne, I swear I’m not doing it to piss you off. But really, you’ve got to admit that none of this belonged in the main text, but I wanted to mention it, so . . . .