Teen spirit

 "I'm going shopping, does anyone want to go with me?"

I was talking to the air around me, fully expecting silence, when the two teenagers within earshot harmonized "Yes."

The girl is usually a coin flip, but the boy rarely obliges.

Shopping isn't his thing. He's fine with shrugging his shoulders when asked if he needs anything from the market, and then nodding or shaking his head as I press him on a list I've made on my own.

Do you need shorts? Underwear? Soap or shampoo?

What would you like for dinner? Soup? Stroganoff? 

It's so rare to hear: "I'll just go with you," now in a voice so low on the vocal register I can barely make out the words that I almost wanted to celebrate.

I even felt a little remorseful as I ousted him from the front seat in deference to his older sister, who could easily suffer the indignity of taking a backseat to her little brother if she didn't also suffer from motion sickness. A malady the boy himself didn't inherit and wasn't conniving enough to feign. 

He didn't even rhyme the words that have been used against him time and again when his slow-motion meandering makes him the rotten egg.

"You snooze, you lose."

For her part, the surprise presence of her brother on this hastily planned procurement excursion didn't phase her. She doesn't even think of him as a Little Bother let alone call him that to his face. 

She doesn't lord her senior status over his first-year lack of standing. And for his part, he doesn't pester her that he actually stands taller.

For my part, I follow them around the store with a basket as they decide on the things they'd like.

She needs shampoo and conditioner. He needs deodorant and body wash.

She opens caps and breathes in the scent as best as she can through her mask, while he tips a package straight from a shelf into the basket. 

She plucks the thing out with two fingers and an arm's length of utter disdain.

"You can't buy just anything! What if you hate it? What if it's entirely offensive? What if it smelled like a muskrat that died in a sewer?"

He takes a whiff, gags, and quickly puts the stick of odorant back on the shelf. 

"Try this one. It just smells clean."

And this is how it goes for the better part of an hour. We wind our way through clothing and accessories to toiletries. They argue the merits of one snack food over another with good humor. 

She enjoys being his personal shopper and he gains confidence through her recommendations. As I push my card into the reader, I wondered if I've ever felt happier to part with money? 

And that's when it occurred to me that we hadn't been in this particular store together in a decade when my daughter rebelled following a particular temper tantrum from her brother that brought her to tears. 

Noting small joys has been essential to me as I use them to plaster over the mounting dings of life's disappointments. It's the sweet jelly that makes the salty peanut butter palatable in my generational sandwich. 

I am particularly grateful that sometimes teen spirit seems so much more resilient.

It's also nice to know that time heals at least one wound. 

Life is too damn short

 A new Siena poll reported the nearly eight hundred or so New Yorkers it surveyed have largely accepted COVID-19, and its protocols, as an enduring part of their daily existence. 

Most of those who responded said they carry a mask with them wherever they go. And while our confidence has ebbed since the feel-good-days of summer, we are showing more comfort in our pre-pandemic chores. A majority even said they felt comfortable shopping in grocery stores despite feeling the pinch of higher prices and supply-side shortfalls. At least the aisles seem wider now that the stores have mostly abandoned their one-way traffic patterns. 

Of course, half of those surveyed cling to the hope that things will steadily improve, despite transmission rates all over the country remaining exceedingly high, and despite some officials sounding new low-level alarms about the likelihood of variants of the variants coming in via elsewhere. 

Nearly three-quarters of us are comfortable eating inside of a restaurant. We're only middling more confident returning to the workplace. 

What are the options? Quit?

Well … another study affirms there is a Great Resignation afoot, with more than 4.3 million Americans -- nearly three percent of the entire workforce - quitting their jobs in August.

Calling in sick just isn't the same as it used to be, I suppose. Neither is juggling a routine that has been anything but routine. What’s behind all these numbers is still up for debate. But life, some economists now think, is just too damn short.

I still check the trackers every day, toggling between the CDC and The New York Times. I compare their figures to those of our county health department ... and the local school district, and no matter how I figure it, none of the numbers ever make sense. 

Seventy-six thousand cases today, 36 where I live, eleven the day before that. Nine for the week at the school. The two-week average is still flat. The county health department closed its building again and the latest school board meeting attracted the twelve loudest people in the county who think masks are the modern symbol of tyranny and will disfigure the faces of their kids, none of whom go to school anyway because of things they don't understand like Critical Race Theory or things they are afraid of like Halloween celebrations not to mention the War on Christmas that's been waged since a few lovely and caring people started saying "Happy Holidays" in an effort to be more inclusive. 

Sometimes I can't believe I ever got angry trying to make this make sense. 

I have done my level best. I have enthusiastically welcomed the vaccine for myself and my family. I have rolled with the punches of sometimes convoluted and always evolving messaging. I have accepted a moderate ability to adapt as my personal savior.  And perhaps most surprisingly of all, I have stopped staring angrily at the barefaced fools.

I have pushed up my sleeves and soldiered on even when I didn't feel entirely capable. I have laced up my shoes and run my fastest race, and I have set limits. I have made more of an effort to enjoy my neighbors. I have turned the other cheek. 

Just as our parents and their parents weathered the storms of their times and were forever changed, so too are we.

Life is too damn short.

Making allowances

 My husband's nose crinkled. He fixed his quizzical stare - that of a man who has either smelled something rancid or doesn't understand the question - on me.

"Why on earth should we pay people to do the right and moral thing?"

We had been talking about the news; in particular incentives (monetary and other compensation) some employers (and government entities) are offering their workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19. 

He thinks it's wrong. That the altruism of obligation should be the only path lauded.

Suffering should be the gift for those who choose unwisely. 

Whereas I don't really see the problem with funding unpopular mandates if it has the potential to corral more of us toward herd immunity. 

For some reason this idea makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. It offends his sense of fairness.

His take doesn't surprise me. I'm the carrot, he's the stick. And fair is the thing at the end of the summer with all the rides.

He shoots me that look again. 

Discussions like these usually end in a stalemate, and have for more than a

decade as we grappled with the mechanics of how home economics

should work.

"Allowances" shouldn't just be handed to the kids, he argued. "They need to learn the value of work!"

He was also of the belief that we shouldn't pay the kids for completing household chores, seeing as how contributing to the family is an obligatory duty that is needed to advance a common goal.

 

This theory has always struck me as somewhat off, seeing as how there is only one person who ever brings the dishes and the laundry and the vacuum cleaner over the finish line. 

And it isn't him. 

"What? That knife, dangling over the edge of the sink hasn't finished it's race yet."

I don't expect miracles, not after entertaining whether it's fair that Santa gets credit for any gifts that don't fit into a stocking. 

One of the reasons our kids don't have "chores" is that we haven't managed to figure out which random household tasks fall into "job category" and which fall into the "ask not what your parents can do for you but what you can do for your parents" rubric. 

But, aside from philosophical angst and a general lack of consistency, the kids can be persuaded  to empty the dishwasher from time to time and mow the lawn once a week. I thank them by picking up their favorite snacks at the store, or springing for a trendy pair of sneakers. The timing of these gifts, often on a whim, never feels transactional. 

I can tell it bothers him sometimes they have to be cajoled or reminded. That the kindness of their hearts isn't reward enough to spur motivation. 

That it seems like it's always carrot or stick. 

Kindlyists

 It's sometimes a pleasant feeling to immerse oneself in the warm, soothing waters of fiction.

To sit in a tub of bubbling intrigue, getting all pruney, while the edges of a pulpy paperback curl in the steamy humidity.

I'm not ashamed to admit to feeling this creature-comfort envelop me as I read a certain piece of long-form journalism about two authors, their short stories, organ donation, and plagiarism. 

Though, perhaps, I should be.

Ashamed.

The tale had all the hallmarks of an impending train wreck, with too many heroes unable to decide which damsel is worthy of saving while a dark chorus is all too happy to oblige an opinion.

The piece, if you haven't read it, is a fairly clear recitation of the string of events that resulted in a years' long battle between the two women, who accuse one another of intellectual theft and public harassment in a murky soup of hard feelings about the art of friendship.

Kindness, it turns out, has many dark sides.

I wish it were purely fiction.

This battle seems to be just another indicator of the current national psyche. And as we steep ourselves in this tea of social media, we tread some dangerous waters. It's not just about physical isolation, the cloying need to be known, or the degree of difficulty we face if we want even minor transgressions to eventually be forgotten. It's also about how minor transgressions can rage into the world and light our own little corner of it on fire.

We put ourselves out there to be judged. Sometimes harshly. Unsurprisingly, no one comes out in the end as a sympathetic character.

This is why, through a series of avoidable lawsuits, a court will decide what monetary compensation should be afforded to the party that most closely adhered to the laws in question: be they concerning intellectual property or harassment. 

It's tempting to scoff at the litigiousness of our society as well as the cruelty of adults, until one realizes how little control we have over other beings and how much time we are willing to devote to revenge. It can certainly seem, despite the means of legal intervention, we often see our choices flail between the sunk costs we must accept as "water under a bridge," or a scorched earth we try our best to demolish with explosives.  
The law will take a side.

But even when a verdict is rendered, the court of public opinion, of course, will always be out.

Wherever we scroll, we'll see a new iteration of this modern-age harm. 

This week, we watched a whistleblower explain the difference between what Facebook knows to be true and what it tells us about harm its very existence causes to virtually everyone and everything ... from teenage girls to the state of our democracy.

We see the usual finger-pointing: The calls for personal accountability in the face of systemic manipulation. The demand for systemic overhaul without toppling the expectation of continued freedom of speech. I wonder if we are ready for the messy battle that will ensue in search of a cure?

A part of me, an idealistic part, hopes that the answer will be to demand MORE of social media by requiring they do LESS for us: at the very least, we should ensure they stop selling our secrets on the side. Maybe, if they aren’t allowed to track where we go and sell it at a premium to those who seek to influence, we will finally face enough of the truth to see ourselves and each other a little more kindly.

But the lesser part of me - can't wait to read the sequel.