I'm OK, You're Mistaken

Let's get one thing clear – my self esteem is fine. Really. Depending on your yardstick, it's more than fine and up into "inaccurately inflated:" for instance, in high school I was, like every other teenage girl, frightfully insecure about my looks and my weight. (It truly did not help to constantly be hearing, from "helpful" folks, "You could be pretty if you'd only...") It didn't take me too long into adulthood to decide that I was just yummy, thank you, and if you don't like it, it's because I'm not your taste. At almost 100 pounds over my high school weight, I felt SO much more attractive than I did at 16 and 17. I'm now decades older, and I still feel more attractive. I am clear on the fact that others don't agree with me, but it's their loss. Born at a different time and place, I would be the epitome of attractive, and skinny girls would be pitied.

The year my husband and I were engaged, his sister phoned me to ask what size(s) I wore, so she could Christmas shop for me. When I told her (accurately!) she said, "You are not that big!"

"Yes, I am. That's what I wear. That's what I have on right now." This was only two years after high school. I was maybe 10 pounds heavier than I'd been in school, but I was no longer overwrought about it. And I have never been one of those women who wants to receive clothing that's too small. That's just silly and a waste. If I own something, I want it to fit. I have never had "fat clothes" for "bad days" and "skinny clothes" for "motivation."

"You shouldn't be so hard on yourself! You are an attractive young girl! You should dress like it!"

"Well, thank you, but that's what size I wear." I offered to let her look through my closet.

"You are not that big!"

I spent the next 20 minutes getting a ringing lecture on self esteem, and on how I should never get "down on" myself. I sat there wondering not only why she wouldn't take my word for it – if I was going to lie or be delusional, I would have made myself smaller! - but which of us was more "down on" me, me or the one who thought I couldn't be attractive at my size.

She bought me a 100% cotton, button front blouse, 2 ½ sizes too small. I crammed myself into it once, washed it in cold water and hung it to dry, and it still was never again going to button over my chest. Months later, she asked my husband why I never wore it, and he told her. The next Christmas she bought me socks. I loved those socks – I wore them for years, until they had holes in them.

Of course, I've also alienated other large women. Not on purpose, mind you, but I'm just too blunt and literal. They tend to assume we're kindred souls, and say things like, "You know what it's like to struggle with your weight," or "You know what it's like to try every diet and fad out there." No, I don't. I don't struggle. I've never been on a diet, much less a fad diet. I've never asked my doctor for a weight loss prescription. (I know a few people who thought I was crazy or not very bright when I didn't get on Fen Fen – until it turned out to cause heart failure.) I've had women say to me, "You know what it's like to stand there eating Haagen-Dazs over the sink at 3 a.m." and, "You know how it is when you nibble on a salad in front of people, then go home and eat an entire pizza by yourself." Again, no. I don't. I've never eaten in the middle of the night, even when I was awake with pregnancy or kids. I've never eaten a whole pizza, alone or otherwise. I don't nibble in front of people. If I want dessert or another trip to the buffet, I get it.

I find this to be admirable. Others call it being oblivious.

I have discovered that my factual-to-understated way of communicating lends itself to misunderstanding – the irony is that I communicate that way precisely to avoid misunderstanding.

Years ago, I complained to a friend that I always got cast in bit parts, frequently without lines. He was appropriately sympathetic. I thought it was understood that the reason I was frustrated was because I was capable of playing much larger parts, and doing it well.

When I was cast as a lead, I invited him to the show. Afterward, he said, "You never told me you could act."

"I've been doing this since I was a kid! You knew that."

"But you never told me you were any good."

What? I was not understanding this line of inquiry. He wasn't understanding why I was puzzled.

"You said you always get little bitty, no line parts."

"I do."

"I figured that meant you couldn't act! If you can act, why do you get little bit parts?"

"I don't know! That's why it annoys me!"

OK, that's oversimplifying. I did have a good idea why. Sure, I'm talented, but so are lots of other people. Plus, I rarely look like the picture a director has in their head. Maybe they're turned off by my lisp. Maybe they want someone younger, thinner, older, darker … whatever.

Years after the fact, I heard something second hand that may not be true, but sounds pretty credible. A director I frequently auditioned for, who praised my work but rarely cast me, was somehow testing me. This director was apparently waiting for the day I stormed in, furious over a casting decision, and 1. demanded to know why I wasn't cast in a lead role and 2. demand a larger part. Then s/he'd know that I was "ready," that I "really want it."

Even after I've had a long time to consider this (and yes, it does appear that other people had such tantrums and it worked), this still makes no sense to me. I can't stand whiny, prima donna fits. Why in heaven's name would anyone want to promote "it's not faaaaaiiiir, what about meeeee?" behavior? The theory, apparently, was that it prepared you to survive in a cutthroat business, but I don't buy it. I've known people who wanted it so badly they hurt down to the roots of their teeth, they lost sleep, they couldn't eat, they would have sold their own mothers – that wanting has zero effect on a person's talent, and more importantly, on their work ethic. In my opinion, "wanting it" is a poor reason for casting decisions.

But again, apparently word went around that I had low self esteem. After all, my only reaction to both praise and to a walk-on part was to say, "Thank you." Apparently the belief was that if I believed in myself, I'd be more self centered and greedy. I find that to be particularly amusing and flawed thinking – I've always found blowing one's own horn to be a sign of low self esteem.

I think anyone's work ought to stand on its own. If my work is good, hire me. If it's not, don't. Pretty simple stuff.

It's annoying to me when someone asks about my "qualifications" or training instead of just asking to see my work. This is not because I'm embarrassed by my credentials, but because I've known extensively credentialed hacks and amazingly talented amateurs. Look at my work – my acting, writing, photographs, anything I've done - and tell me what you actually think, not what you think my credentials indicate.

I've learned, through trial and error and observing human nature, not to do certain things, even though I personally see no problem with them. I know that, for instance, if I had mentioned that I'd never had a solo singing role, I wouldn't have gotten the first one that I did; the same goes for the first time I wore a mic for a singing part, and the first time I made a wedding cake. Say, "I've never..." and chances are, you never will. Say, "Of course I can," and you'll get the chance.

I know not to express any reservation or dismay to a client – at least not if I want the job. I thought that people who'd known me for years should be exceptions, though; they're not.

A friend hired me, years ago in the days of film photography, to do some publicity photos. They wanted studio photos, with a cloth backdrop and studio lighting. That's more complicated than shooting on location photos, my specialty. Back in the days of film, it also meant light meter readings and Polaroids to make sure your settings were correct. If you screwed up, you wouldn't know until the photos were developed, and by then it was too late to fix it. You'd have to set up another shoot and try to get it right this time, and the images would never be exactly the same.

My husband is good at things I am bad at, and vice versa. (I think that's why God planned for conception to require input from two people.) At the time, he was unarguably better at studio setups than I was. He might still be better. Still, he was unavailable for this shoot, which had to be done in time for things like publication deadlines. I had to transport our portable studio, set up, take readings and shoot on my own. I mentioned to the client, an old friend, that I wished my husband could come along and cover my back. "You'll get perfectly decent, serviceable photos; he's just got more experience than I do."

The shoot went very well. The photos are delightful; I was proud of them then, and I'm proud of them now. One participant used the individual portrait taken of her on that day as her business portrait for several years afterward. Still, it was more work than I'm used to, since I couldn't slack off and run on autopilot, and I had no backup.

My friend seemed amazed out of all proportion. "These are great! These are amazing! I can't believe how good these are!"

Finally I said, "You know, all that enthusiasm is a tiny bit insulting. It's as if you didn't think I could do it."

"Well, I didn't. I mean, I had my doubts."

"I told you you'd get perfectly decent, serviceable photos! If I couldn't do it, I wouldn't have taken the job!"

"I figured 'decent and serviceable' meant total garbage. I was thinking we'd have to reshoot with Dan."

Wow. My literal tendencies bite me in the butt again. Here was someone who'd known me for years, had seen my work, and still didn't "get" me.

I've avoided having a blog for years because it just seemed a little too "all me, all the time!" I've been writing since I was a kid. I have the binders, the stationery, the yellow legal pads, and now the word processors full. I have the requisite manuscript that should be sent to a publisher. Still, I rarely had anyone, even my own family, read anything. This was again taken as a sign by some that I thought the work was no good. I'd get little pep talks about how good I was, how I shouldn't hide my talents, how I should believe in myself. It gets a little old, this idea that I think I'm no good at anything.

So, for the record, and forever immortalized, here it is: I realize that I am bright. I know that I have talent. I really, truly do. I am not afraid that someone will dislike me or my work. I am well aware that yes, indeed, someone WILL dislike me and/or my work, and that's OK. Opinions about alien life, Elvis' death or Lady Gaga's talent DO NOT actually form or alter reality. I am what I am despite what anyone, including me, might say or think.

OK? I'm amazing. Can we give it a rest?

Growing Up Is Hard To Do

My youngest daughter was asked to speak in church last weekend. I think she did a great job. She took a great deal of her talk from published sources, so she did a lot of reading quotes instead of presenting her own take on the subject, but why reinvent the wheel? If you find a source who says it eloquently, quote them. She was poised, spoke clearly and, like the actress that she is, knew what and how to emphasize.

Afterwards, someone who frequently sees her in her class at church said to me, "She does a much better job reading things she's familiar with instead of reading straight from the scriptures. She ought to read her scriptures out loud more often." Well, everyone should probably read their scriptures more, but that's another subject. When she's asked to read a scripture passage aloud in class, she stumbles and fumbles and stutters and asks for help. I smiled and nodded; every parent spends time doing that when listening to others describe their kid(s). You see, when asked to read a scripture out loud at home, or even in a class I'm in, she does it beautifully, handling even the foot long Hebrew names better than many adults. When her parents aren't around, though, you'd swear she was a struggling reader who'd never even seen a Bible.

It took me back to watching her oldest sister give a talk in the children's meeting at church. She'd chosen to read a story out of a church magazine. She couldn't have been any older than seven, because we moved to a different town the summer after she completed first grade. Again, practicing this story at home, she sounded great. Once she got to church, she sounded borderline illiterate.

Most of the time when a child read something aloud during these meetings, one of the leaders (or a parent) would stand next to them and whisper the words in their ears, and they'd repeat it into the microphone. This was especially true with the younger children, who weren't confident readers yet. I knew my child, and knew she didn't need me.

I watched her hesitate and mumble for a few sentences, then stood up and whispered in her ear, "You can do it." It was like flipping a switch. Suddenly her reading was smooth, clear, precise. She had no trouble with any of the pronunciations, understood the punctuation, and sounded like a child years older than she was. Afterward, all the leaders and teachers swooned over her, telling her what a great job she did. Instead of basking in the praise, she stared at the floor and fidgeted.

One of the leaders said to me, "Sometimes all it takes to shine is to hear that your parents have confidence in you." Again, I smiled and nodded. This was most certainly not how this daughter viewed things.

She was furious with me. I had caused her to stand out, to look DIFFERENT than the other kids, in public, and that was unforgivable. Especially at that age, in kindergarten and first grade, we had lots of discussions that began with her saying, "Everybody else..." She HATED the fact that she stood out. She had insisted that instead of the beautiful coloring she did at home, "In school, you're SUPPOSED to scribble. Everybody does." The same went for any other skill; it fell on deaf ears to tell her that the other kids were doing the best they could, and she should do the best SHE could. "It should all be THE SAME," she would insist.

She was also angry because I had deprived her of the attention of the leaders, the one on one of having somebody focus on just her instead of on a large group of kids. She didn't see that with all the praise she was getting, she was getting more attention, positive attention, and that it came from every adult in the room, not just one. She wanted the leader standing next to her, whispering in her ear. Plus, I had made her stand out as different, and that was just wrong.

My middle daughter has always had a severe case of Middle Child Syndrome, never feeling quite as though she got as much attention, recognition, praise or whatever else as she wanted. She frequently voiced the opinion that, "Things are only special when the oldest and the youngest do them." Even though we insisted that accomplishments were special whenever anyone achieved them, she'd roll her eyes and tell us we were wrong.

My son is happiest sitting quietly in the back of a classroom, being unnoticed. He does not like to be singled out. He blows most praise, from any source, off; he's such a total perfectionist that he doesn't think that much is praiseworthy. (He constantly tells me that people's standards are too low. Every now and then, he'll look at what the average person can do as compared to what he's done and announce, "People are idiots!" I try to convince him otherwise, but am frequently thwarted by 1. people who are idiots and 2. his conviction that my standards are too low.) He has made an armchair diagnosis of his little sister - "narcissistic personality disorder."

Ah, my youngest; she deeply craves attention. Mostly, she wants people to think that she's adorable. Somewhere in both her conscious and unconscious mind, she remembers when people found her mere existence adorable. As the youngest, she noticed that when we were out in public, when people swooned over any of the children it was over her, the baby. Everything she said, did and was had adoration heaped on it by the ton. Every baby experiences this.

When my nephew Jeremy was nine, he asked one day, "Aunt Sherrie? How come everybody just loves babies, but once you get older nobody cares?" At that point, he was watching the phenomenon from the opposite perspective; he was the oldest child in our household of five children. It was my son, the baby, who was receiving the swooning and adoration at that point. We'd be out in public with all five kids, little blond stair steps, and all people would see was, "Oh, look at that baby! He's so cute!" Sure, he was adorable, but so were the big kids.

I explained my belief: "I think it's because babies are all potential, so people can imagine them as anything they want. They've never disagreed with someone, or done anything that would offend them. People look at a baby and imagine the very best of everything. Plus, it's just hardwired into people to love babies - otherwise, they'd never be willing to deal with all the work and exhaustion and sacrifice of caring for a completely helpless, tiny person. It's a survival of the human race thing."

I don't know if it helped Jeremy, but I think it was a good explanation.

My youngest simply knows that it used to be an absolute given that her place in the universe was 1. at its center and 2. surrounded by adoring subjects. When she hit about seven years old, she noticed that it was no longer a given that she was darling. People did not automatically swoon over her mere presence or existence. She became convinced that it was because she wasn't cute enough any more. I remember watching her get her Girl Scout cookie order form one year and sighing, "I won't sell as many cookies this year. I used to be cuter." Half of her life has been a pre-adolescent version of the midlife crisis.

She recently had to move up from the children's organization at church to the youth organization. She was not thrilled. She insisted, frequently and loudly, that getting older meant, "I'll be BORING!" ("Boring," by the way, is worse than death.) She tries in vain to recapture what it felt like to be three and precocious. Most kids her age exult in leaving behind the little kids; she is sure that if she's surrounded by younger children, she'll be cute by association. She's warming up to the whole youth group thing, which is good. I suspect a lot of that has to do with great leaders and other youth, but a lot has to do with being the youngest one in the group. That is her comfort zone.

Her older siblings watch her exhibit some immature behavior and cringe. "Why does she DO that?" they ask. I remind them all that they did immature things when they were younger. Frequently they say things like, "Yes, but I was stupid," or "I have no idea what I was thinking." Well, OK, I tell them, it's the same for her. Eventually she'll "get" it.

"Can you get her to stop that?" they ask. They do not like the answer - "No, I can't." A couple of days ago I asked her older sister, "Did you listen to me all the time, and do what I told you to without question?" She snorted at the ridiculousness of this.

"NO!!"

"Well, neither does she."

I have to admit, I have more patience than I otherwise would because I do have older kids. They're adults now, delightful adults, so I know that no phase lasts forever. This too shall pass. If I didn't know that, sometimes being a parent and saying things for the 1,849th time, this week alone, would drive me literally insane.

Eventually, my "baby" will discover that we have a culture in which teens are considered the height of attractiveness. She will, I hope, be delighted to be a teen. She will discover that growing up means more freedom, more choices, not being boring.

Oh please, oh please.

I'll settle for anything that is progress toward age appropriateness, and pride in getting there, and worry about how she'll eventually deal with the loss of youth, the youth she now does not want, when we get there.

"A Clean, Well Lighted Place"

I wrote this several years ago. I tend to think of the ditch I mention as mine, but I've recently rediscovered the fact that it looms large in other people's memories and affections, too. Maybe sharing the memories benefits us all.

I have friends who live in the mentioned subdivisions; houses that we used to call McMansions are now considered just standard suburban homes in standard neighborhoods. Just so any of you living there know, I don't hold it against you, really I don't! Now, if you served on the city council that covered the ditch, well - I do hold that against you. Sorry.

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Every day for most of my life, I've looked at the same hillside to the east. Our valley is ringed by the Sierra Nevada range and its foothills. I've usually lived in the northeast part of the valley, close to the foothills on two sides. They're rarely green; usually they're brown or yellow with reddish volcanic rock showing through the sage and dried grass. They were great places to climb, play hide and seek or catch lizards when I was a kid.

Over the years, the city has slowly crawled up the flanks of the hills. First, there were only ranches at the base. Then, a few houses sprung up low on the hill – trophy homes taking advantage of the view. When I was 12 or so, a hospital was built there – again, fairly low on the hill. More recently, the ranches at the base have given way to upscale subdivisions. I mourned the loss of the last ranch, knowing full well that the owners made a bundle on the sale and were undoubtedly less grieved than I was.

With the upscale subdivisions came the sprawling golf course. Now there's man made irregular Kelly green patches snaking almost all the way to the top of the hills. They're visible from clear across the valley, a change I'm not used to. The bright green just looks odd next to all the yellow, brown and red.

With the golf course came the palatial clubhouse, a veritable castle halfway up the slope. In an odd way it reminds me of a medieval fortress. It's lovely, I guess, and the view is stunning, but I resent it. I liked the unimproved hill.

The hills to the north have sprouted crowns of houses, large homes on tiny lots looking out over the valley. Soon I'm sure the subdivisions will climb up to meet them, but right now they perch there, seemingly disconnected. I watch the tops of the nearby hills and worry. One is Canoe Mountain. I don't know if that's the actual name or not, but it's always been called that. It's shaped like a canoe; I worry that the distinctive shape will soon be obliterated by a new neighborhood.

The trophy homes are multiplying now. Yesteryear's impressive designs looked dwarfed and dated by their new neighbors.

Yet, with all this going on, I was unprepared for the way the hills looked yesterday. They look ripped and bleeding, huge swaths cut into the incline and leaving exposed areas that leak pink and yellow. I have never so clearly understood what John Denver meant when he sang about "scars upon the land." It looks like strip mining, but it's not. They're putting in more houses.

I tried not to think about it. I tried not to worry about the fact that for the first time, the actual contours of the hillside are being altered on a large scale. I have enough to worry about. We need a new roof, I need to see the dentist, my daughter is leaving for college, my garden needs tending, my children need tending... Construction is inevitable, change is inevitable, and I can't use a lot of mental energy decrying it.

I thought I'd handled the stress very well. I apparently had not. As often happens, the stress leaked into my sleep.

I dreamed I was property shopping, uncharacteristically with a fairly large group. We were looking at places that had survived as little farms or ranches. The plan was not to convert them to new neighborhoods, but leave them untouched. In my altered reality, my friend Vickie was planning on using one slightly small, ramshackle property with a tall, skinny house as an art gallery. I was beside myself with glee.

It was not as exciting, though, as discovering an open stream. We found that several of the places had this stream running through or by them. We stood on the spot where it flowed under the street, watching the fish. Because it was a dream reality, the fish were a very unlikely mix of saltwater fish, koi and some utterly fictional varieties. I decided that people must have let their fish out of their tanks into the wild. I resolved to buy the neighboring real estate immediately. It was disorienting to wake up and discover that none of it existed.

I don't need Sigmund Freud to tell me what that was all about. I try not to bear grudges, I really do, and I usually do pretty well. I know I bear the city a grudge, though, from 25 years ago.

Easily my favorite feature of the yard I grew up in was the irrigation ditch going through the pasture. My parents wouldn't allow me out there by myself until I was eight years old, fearing that I would drown. A reasonable fear, surely, but I don't think it would have been an issue with me. I'm not a big swimmer, and I've never accidentally fallen into any water. I'm not generally a physical risk taker. Besides, it was usually only a foot or two deep. If I fell, I could just stand up. Anyway, from the age of eight on, I spent hours and hours out there. I rarely missed a day in warm weather. I caught minnows, I inner tubed, I sailed my toy boat. I dug bones out of the bank, convinced I'd discovered a dinosaur even when my mother assured me that it was a cow. I studied the moss, the snails and anything else I found. I watched and photographed the ducks, hoping we'd get a nesting pair and a brood of fuzzy ducklings. I sat on the low footbridge, kicking the sparkling water into the air. I learned that mud, immediately applied, would mitigate the effect of stinging nettles.

In the winter, the ditch often froze enough to permit ice skating. My parents would have to break a hole for the horses to drink through, and when the ice was two or more inches thick they deemed it safe to skate on. We never broke through; even if we had, the deepest spot on our property was only about 3 ½ feet deep. We would have been wet, but not in danger.

Since I was the youngest, my skates were usually hand me downs. When I was about twelve, though, my parents bought me a beautiful pair of pale blue leather ice skates. I tied gold pom poms to the toes, and felt glamorous wearing them. Wobbly figure eights were as fancy as my skating got, but I loved gliding back and forth between our fence and the bridge.

After it left our pasture, the ditch went only a short distance before it went under the road, dropping a number of feet on the other side. The water pouring down from the pipe laid under the street dropped about four to six feet before it hit the ditch again, and had dug a deep hole underneath, the deepest spot I knew of anywhere in the ditch. Neighborhood kids loved this swimming hole. It was the only spot we knew of that was over-your-head deep. Just about everyone except me liked going through the pipe, to shoot out the other side and plummet through the air. I wouldn't even float under the bridge in our own pasture; I surely wasn't going to go under the street in a dark and narrow pipe. Everyone swore that you could breathe just fine, and that it wasn't scary at all, but I still refused to try it. I hopped out well ahead of the street, afraid that if I waited too long I'd be sucked in.

I'd followed the ditch for about a mile upstream, to where it emerged from a large pipe under the street. From there, you had to go quite a ways upstream before you encountered open water again, so I knew that the city occasionally buried the irrigation channels. Still, from our house to the river, a considerable distance, the ditch flowed unimpeded. I was sure it always would.

Then I came home from school one day and found bulldozers in my back yard. I was fourteen years old. The city had decided to bury the ditch. My parents knew, but had chosen not to tell me, knowing how upset I'd be. The heavy machinery was preparing the channel for the culvert they'd be laying.

I thought about all the memories I'd made, and the fact that there would never be any more. I realized that I didn't even have decent photos. My camera was malfunctioning; the shutter was sticking, and pushing hard enough to take a photo jostled the camera so that the resulting image was blurry. Despite this, and my mother's insistence that I would be in the way and get in trouble, I grabbed the camera and ran for the pasture.

My spot for quiet contemplation was marred by roaring, beeping machinery. They were working their way through from our neighbor's yard and had just started on ours. I took photos of the rest of the ditch, capturing blurry images of my sacred place. The water looked like chocolate milk, not like the crystal clear water I was used to. It tore at my insides to see things this way, but I couldn't imagine not even saying goodbye.

As well as the smaller footbridge, we had one large bridge made of heavy timbers – old railroad ties and the like. It was tough enough to drive across, and it was where I'd stood to sail my wooden boat, unrolling the ball of yarn attached to its stern. A tractor picked the bridge up and threw it aside, splintering it.

I never should have gone back out the next day, but I had to have one more moment with just me, no workmen and no machines. It was awful. They'd stopped the flow of water in preparation for laying the culvert. Instead of twisting and turning, everything in my ditch was now straight. No more banks, no more plants; it was squared off and lined with gravel. It was sterile and straight sided. There would be no more ducks, no more fish, no more inner tube rides. My heart broke.

I didn't go back out until after they'd laid and buried the pipe. I rarely went back out after that. It just hurt too much. This old childhood hurt can still bring me to tears. I lost a friend or family member, lost them rather cruelly.

During my junior year of high school, our debate teacher had us read "A Clean, Well Lighted Place." I don't remember anything about it other than the title. Our assignment afterward was to write about our own clean, well lighted place. "Everyone needs a place for reflection, for decision making, for a refuge from the world, " he told us. He asked us to write about our own. Then, we'd be asked to read our essays out loud to the class.

Far and away, the most popular answer was, "my bedroom." For most teenagers, their room and their car are the only places they truly feel are theirs. I struggled to write something mainstream, but I just couldn't do it.

The debate teacher and I did not get along. Later in the year I left his class and the debate team; we simply could not work together. I was sure he would find something wrong with my essay. I wrote about the ditch, sure that his first complaint would be that an irrigation ditch through a dusty horse pasture could not qualify as clean.

My essay began, "I no longer have a clean, well lighted place. I lost mine three years ago." I was a teenager, with a life far different from my life at age eight or ten. Still, I felt the loss of my meditative spot acutely. There were times I needed it, and more such times were coming.

I described my love for this simple, watery spot. I told about going there when I was in pain, as I did at age 12 when I found out my best friend was moving away. I described celebrating, exploring, decision making, regaining my equilibrium when it was shaky, anchored by this beloved place.

While I was reading, my overriding emotion was anger. I was still angry at the city. I was angry at a disliked teacher for making me bare my soul in front of my peers. I was angry at the thought of being ridiculed; I was sure someone would. No one was going to be able to relate to a deep, emotional connection to a ditch, I was sure.

I even described that horrible last glimpse before they laid the pipe without letting too much of the sadness through. I described feeling adrift without the place I had used to recharge my batteries. Then, I gritted my teeth and braced for the comment period.

Anger was manageable, controllable. I was prepared to continue feeling angry. I knew I could get through the nasty comments and the low grade I expected.

Instead, I was undone by understanding. I had been so together, so articulate. Then my friend Wendy spoke.

"I was really moved by your description of how it was cut straight and square," she said, and went on to say that she truly felt that was a desecration. She hadn't even finished the first sentence before I was in tears. I had not expected this. Someone understood. Someone sympathized. I began to bawl. I couldn't even speak; I mouthed, "Thank you."

I don't remember my grade. (I do recall that, uncharacteristically, the teacher had nothing critical to say.) I will always remember, vividly, how Wendy's kindness felt. Any loss is more bearable when it's understood.

Memory Lane

I recently got to talk to a woman who grew up in the same neighborhood as I did. Both of us are back in the neighborhood - Tiffany in her childhood home, me 2 1/2 blocks from where my mother still lives. I didn't realize how much I missed talking to someone who had the same memories, the same frame of reference. Even my siblings might not share all my memories, especially the ones 15 and 11 years older than I am.

When we were kids, the street that both my parents' property and Tiffany's butt up against was a dirt road. There was a white structure that we all called The Gate across the road two doors down from our house. It was a fence, not a gate, made out of heavy timbers painted white, with orange "safety" markings and a reflector or two. In the middle, there was a gap about 18 inches wide, so you could walk through it. I don't remember the reason that the city put up The Gate, but for years it effectively marked the dividing line through the neighborhood. I can remember when there was nothing but open space past it, space bisected by the dirt road and the irrigation ditch that ran parallel. Eventually both hit North Truckee Lane, another road that was dirt when I was small. Small ranches were the only residences along North Truckee Lane for a long time. On a corner I pass most days while driving my son to his 6:45 a.m. class, I remember watching the owners train their horses for the rodeo. Across the street and a bit south, there was a donkey that brayed loudly at us whenever we road our horses by. It was like passing a large, nasal barking dog. You could hear him protesting whatever it was that set him off even when you were half a mile or so past him. I rode double on our horse with my mother or my sister until I was three or four, when I could finally ride big, gentle Lady by myself.

Most of North Truckee Lane was swallowed up a few years later, about the time it was paved, by a road that now encircles our entire valley and the two cities in it.

Our house, the one I grew up in, and the one next to it - at one time the only homes on our street, back when it was a dirt road outside of town - were three bedroom, one bath houses. At one time, two bedroom one bath houses were standard. Ours and its "extra" bedroom were considered large for a time. (My husband grew up only a couple of miles away, in a neighborhood of two bed, one bath houses.) Then, when I was probably about six or seven, the city started building a new neighborhood on the opposite side of The Gate. These houses looked huge to us. Most of them were two story, an anomaly in itself at the time. They also had four bedrooms and two bathrooms. We snickered a bit about that; they just seemed so overdone. We referred to it as the rich people's neighborhood. Tiffany lived in one of those new houses.

I don't recall ever meeting her, although I do recall knowing two of her sisters when we were in our teens. I did know some of the kids from the far side of The Gate, but most of them were boys.

Even with new construction going in all the time, with the small ranches being sold to make way for subdivisions and paved roads, there was a lot of open space still around us on three sides when I was a kid. We lived in a chunk, several blocks square, that was considered "unincorporated county," even as we slowly became surrounded. We had over an acre, and about half of that was horse pasture. Our neighbors kept horses as well, until I was into my teens. A ditch flowed through the pasture from north to south. Our leg was unusual; a block to the north, it curved from a west to east flow to go south through our block. Just to the south of us, it turned back to a west-east route. Even with many houses nearby, we had large vacant areas.

I wasn't allowed near the ditch without a sibling to supervise me until I was eight, but even before then I was used to playing in vacant lots. After I turned eight, I spent even more time outside, since I could finally play at the water's edge, catching minnows or watching frogs. The back yard was nice, and huge, and I frequently caught garter snakes there, but the pasture offered both water and solitude.

The neighborhood kids built our own treehouse in the lot to the south of my house. It was a fairly ordinary thing to ask your parents for spare wood or nails, or just ask if you could rummage through the scrap pile. The tree we chose was a big apple tree close to a fence. We got permission from the man in the house behind the fence to nail our platform to his fence, and we put the platform about four feet up. We ran chicken wire around the bottom of the platform to enclose our downstairs "room," then hung fabric in front of the wire for privacy. We nailed steps straight into the tree. We had a casual rivalry with a group of kids from behind The Gate, and there was a lot of throwing of dirt clods and fallen apples. We loved our enclosed room, because they thought they were hitting us with their thrown objects, but they were hitting the chicken wire. We'd have snowball fights that took hours and ranged over the better part of a mile. We rode bikes down dirt roads and over small hills, our own bike jumps.

My walk home from elementary school could go along the streets, but it was quicker (and more fun) to go through a vacant lot to get to the ditch, then follow it down. There was a narrow trail worn next to the thick hybrid willows. In a few places, the bank rose several feet above the ditch, and the willows were so thick that you couldn't see the water. For most of the way, you walked between tall cedar fences and the willows. In at least 3 places that I knew of, the ditch flowed through pipes that took it under the street. There were frequently ducks and frogs around, a few misplaced balls or other toys, dropped pocket knives and the like, and sometimes you'd find something really odd. Once, a severed goat's head appeared in the water. Kids being kids, we gathered on either side of the ditch and poked it with sticks.

I think I'm part of the last generation whose parents felt safe just turning us loose like that. "Be home before dark" was a common admonition. Often on weekends and during the summer, kids would have breakfast, head out with instructions to return for lunch, then head out again after lunch knowing you had until sundown. I don't remember anyone being hurt beyond skinned knees or elbows. I never saw kids with cigarettes or alcohol pilfered from parents. Even in the privacy of our screened in room, nobody lit matches or got naked or anything else we would have considered "stupid." Even kids like me, who tended to be awkward or "goody-goody" or "slow" or any other trait that was different than "ideal" figured out how to interact because we had to. Running home to mom with a complaint was a good way to get made fun of or left out. I remember threatening to tell my mother something only once, when someone did something I thought was harmful; I don't remember what it was, but I have a vague idea that the mere threat was enough to quash it.

As Tiffany and I talked, I said, "Do you remember before they built the park?" I was practically giddy when she said, "Oh, I was so mad! They even cut down the tree with the swings!"

My current house backs onto the park. We love that we have a gate that goes straight to the park. This park, I'll admit, has grown on me in 30+ years. I, and my kids, have some good memories there. But there will always be a warm place in my heart for the vacant lot it used to be.

Despite the fact that there were many empty lots, this one was referred to be everyone as just The Lot - as in, "Mom, I'm gonna go play in The Lot." It was on Tiffany's side of The Gate, surrounded by two story houses on two sides. The other two sides face streets.

The west side, one of the long sides, faces a fairly quiet residential street. Back when it was just a vacant lot, I remember the street being closed to traffic when a certain amount of snow fell. There was a ridge all along the lot that made for great sledding, down the ridge, across the street and into the cul-de-sacs on the other side. Even in the summer, everyone referred to it as The Sledding Hill. After a good storm, there would be dozens of us dragging our sleds up the hill and sliding down the hill and across the street. A gully ran almost the length of the lot; the tree Tiffany referred to was in the gully. I think it was a cottonwood, and it was what my mom called "a volunteer." It grew simply because a seed landed, and the gully funneled enough water to the roots that it grew. Someone had hung a tire swing from it. Someone else had hung a simple rope with a knot at the end. I think there was a regular swing, too, made out of a slat of wood and rope.

When they built the park, they leveled most of the lot and tore out the tree. There's a few mounds that are supposed to look natural, but they're too short, too symmetrical, and on the wrong side of the lot, covered in lawn. Our collective indignation at losing The Sledding Hill took years to fade - especially after a snow storm. And sure, the city put in a swingset, but it wasn't the same. We missed "our" tree.

As we talked, our friend Julie listened. I tried to explain about the vacant lot and the hours we'd spent there. Both Tiffany and I told her how furious we'd been to lose our play place to a leveled, sanitized park, but she just looked more and more puzzled.

"Did you go through the pipe under the street?"

"Oh, yeah!"

I turned to Julie. "I think I'm the only kid who didn't ride their innertube through the pipe that went under the street between her house and mine." Again, Julie looked politely puzzled, even as I tried to explain.

Just after the bend in the ditch that took it east again, the ditch went under the street. (This is the same street that would be closed, in our minds, just so we could sled across it.) The water fell about six feet once on the other side, creating a little waterfall, and the force of the falling water created one of the very few places in the ditch where the water was over everyone's head. We estimated The Swimming Hole to be about seven feet or so deep, based on the observations of people who hit the bottom after going through the pipe. It was about seven feet wide, too, before the ditch narrowed again to its standard three to five feet across.

I am severely water phobic. There was no way, not even for a million dollars, that I was going through the pipe. Everyone assured me that you could breathe, despite having to lay on your back to go through, and assured me that even if I didn't swim well, I would not drown in The Swimming Hole. It was a valiant but vain attempt; I never even went in The Swimming Hole, much less through the pipe. I climbed out of the water a long way before hitting the pipe, for fear I'd be sucked through against my will. My sister went through; she loved it. Every other kid in the neighborhood and their visiting friends and relatives went through; not me.

"I was so mad when they covered the ditch," Tiffany said.

"Oh, I've never gotten over it. My son feels so gypped when he hears my stories." My son can't believe he doesn't get to go wading, tubing, skating, catching fish, frogs and snakes, right here in our neighborhood.

I told my second oldest daughter about talking to Tiffany, and she was aghast at stories of the pipe. She assumed that we'd done it in secret, without our parents knowledge or consent. "No one does stuff that dangerous any more!" she said. I found that rather amusing - she's my thrill seeker, boundary pusher and the one of my kids who exults in breaking rules. I assured her that our parents knew. "Now, kids' stories are things like, 'I played video games for 12 hours straight,' " she said. "They get carpal tunnel." I think she's right, but boy, the world was safer back then, I think.

Consider it: with less supervision, fewer scheduled activities and fewer facilities, we were still safer. My parents were overprotective, and they thought nothing of sending us to the movies by ourselves, or letting us go swimming with no adult supervision, much less lifeguards, and letting us build and sit in our own tree fort. I miss those days, for me and for my kids. It's sad that they're gone, probably forever.

But boy, it sure felt good to talk to someone else who knew EXACTLY what I was talking about!

Oh, by the way: I live in one of those "rich people's houses," but now, the neighborhood is considered decidedly downscale, despite most houses, like mine, having been added onto since then. Fashion is fickle, and it dislikes age.

Phoebe and Tyler

 

I've been thinking about Phoebe Prince and Megan Meier a lot lately. At one time – in Phoebe's case, a mere 10 months ago – their names were every bit the buzz word, topic du jour that Tyler Clementi is now. They were young and beautiful and they killed themselves after being bullied.

Apparently, the "problem" with Phoebe was that she was able to attract boys. Big deal, right? But in high school, everything is a big deal. Most adolescents don't yet know how to place things into proper context. Some kids teased her because she was an immigrant with a thick accent (she was from Ireland). Some were jealous that she fit in apparently so easily with so many diverse kids. After she had relationships (at least one a sexual one) with two popular boys, and befriended another boy who had a girlfriend, she was warned to "stay away from other people's men." (I've always wondered why girls don't threaten said "men" to stay faithful, but I see the whole "stay away from my man" thing so very often.) Phoebe was called a slut and a whore, both behind her back and to her face. Often, the slur of choice was "Irish whore," as thought that was somehow better or worse than an American or Brazilian or Sudanese whore.

Megan thought she'd met a great boy online. He was good looking, funny and a good listener. She was probably just starting to think of him as a current or potential boyfriend when he became very different, saying hurtful things that culminated in, "The world would be better off without you." She hung herself before finding out that her "friend" named "Josh" was actually the middle aged mother of a classmate. She never meant for anything bad to happen, this duplicitous woman swore.

I can see their faces in my head, snapshots that their families shared after their deaths. The girls are smiling, mugging and laughing. Megan had a tendency to make the ridiculous "kissy face" that two of my nieces often do when being photographed. Phoebe liked eyeliner and scarves.

There's other young, beautiful, dead people I never met taking up room in my brain. Hope Witsell was 13 and in junior high. With the poor judgment common to kids her age, she sent topless photos to a boy she was attracted to. She hoped he'd be impressed enough to become her boyfriend. Instead, he shared the photos, and his friends shared the photos, and THEIR friends shared the photos, and Hope found herself ridiculed by hundreds of kids from not only her own school, but also the local high school. She too was called a slut and a whore. "I can't be a whore," she wrote in her journal. "I'm too inexperienced." She, too, killed herself.

Jesse Logan was 18, five years older than Hope. She was a stunning blonde, about to go off to college and adult life. She'd been through middle school and high school, but she was still a teen. She, too, had the bad judgment to send topless photos of herself to a boy who shared them. Of course, you can see a pattern here and guess what happened – the name calling, the humiliation, the tears and the self inflicted death. She was not a whore, but she'd become convinced that that was all anyone would ever think of her.

Sladjana Vidovic was the 4^th teenager in her community to commit suicide in a period of just over 2 years. All had been bullied. Sladjana was called "Slutty Jana" and "Slutty Jana Vagina;" just like calling Phoebe an "Irish whore," this name calling denigrated her heritage as well as humiliated her personally. She and another teen suicide from her community, Jennifer Eyring, were heterosexual. Two others, Eric Mohat and Meredith Rezak, were at least rumored to be homosexual.

When I heard about Tyler Clementi, the fact that the infamous footage shot by his roommate and sent out over the Internet showed him with another man seemed to be the smallest piece of the puzzle, to me. I've heard many people speculate that being "outed" as being gay is what caused him such despair that he killed himself. I read one opinion that speculated that, "in his mind, it was better to be dead than to be gay." It's impossible to say what Tyler was thinking, since we can't ask him, but I think that assumption is faulty.

I remember being nineteen, Tyler's age, even though it was more than half my lifetime ago. I was no longer in a high school environment, where everything is washed in insecurity and hormones, but I wasn't that far removed from it, either. If someone had taken video of me in an intimate situation, including making out, with my boyfriend, and had shown that video to others, I would have been shatteringly, deeply humiliated and angry. The Internet didn't exist in 1985, so there would have been no chance of thousands or millions of people seeing the video, and I still would have been so mortified that I would have been unable to move about in public, or even with my friends, for fear of someone saying something hurtful. I would have cried for hours at a time and been inconsolable. I would have severed friendships, unable to comprehend how friends could do something so hurtful. I quite probably would have at least considered breaking up with my boyfriend, as though that would help. I can't say with any certainty that I wouldn't have felt suicidal. My entire world would have caved in.

I married the man who was my boyfriend at age 19, so I would not have been embarrassed to be seen with him, or to have anyone know that we were dating. I absolutely would not be feeling ashamed of being heterosexual. I wouldn't have been doing anything unheard of or illegal or even odd. Yet I know that if I was away at college, I would almost certainly have dropped out, unable to function on campus or return to my classes. If I thought the video would follow me home, the chance of my feeling suicidal would have increased tremendously. I would not have been able to imagine getting over or working through the pain and fury. Betrayal of any kind pushes my emotional buttons, so I would have been crushed. I would have been unable to function normally in any way.

After Tyler found out that his roommate was taping him and transmitting it, he wrote that he was "kinda pissed," and he also said that his roomie was "a pretty decent roommate." Not exactly heated language, under the circumstances. It was also a full day after those comments that he took his life. If I were to guess, I would say that whoever he was dating broke off the relationship, or at least suggested that they shouldn't see each other for a while. I'm also guessing that Tyler expected mostly sympathy from others - "Dude, I can't believe your roommate would do that!" - and was horrified to discover that even his friends were laughing about the incident, laughing at him. Some may have even urged him to join in the laughter - "C'mon, you gotta admit it's funny!" - and some probably avoided meeting his eye. That's conjecture, of course, but based on what you know of human nature, it sounds pretty plausible, doesn't it? Here's what also seems likely to me: Each incident over that 24 hours piled on top of the others, until Tyler felt that he would never, ever be able to get out from under the mountain of humiliation and pain. The aftermath was worse than the original betrayal of trust. He couldn't ignore or compartmentalize the incident, the usual male reaction to stress. I think the fact that he'd been with another man is the smallest component of the puzzle. Many straight kids have felt similar despair in similar circumstances. Some of them have also taken their own lives. I can't imagine that they thought being straight was worse than being dead.

The very thing that makes these kinds of incidents so common in kids and young adults (as opposed to, say, those in their 40s) is the very thing that devastates the victims so: immaturity and inexperience. I've heard bullies or other perpetrators express astonishment that their behavior was that harmful. They can't imagine why the victim didn't just shrug it off. S/he was too sensitive, they say. They feel that their behavior is "normal," and can't imagine being devastated by it. The victims, meanwhile, cannot imagine a reality in which they could shrug it off. They cannot imagine anything that would feel worse, and they can't imagine getting over or getting past it.

Sometimes, others make it worse by saying things like, "This is nothing. When you get older, you'll go through things that make this seem like a walk in the park." Hurting kids think, oh my gosh, why would I want to stick around if I'm just going to experience things worse than this? That sounds unimaginable and horrifying. What well meaning folks, usually older adults, mean when they give advice like this is, "Your current reaction is all out of proportion. In a few years, you'll see that it really wasn't the end of the world," but they often phrase it badly or are dismissive. They also fail to remember that often, this truly is the worst thing these kids have ever experienced or can imagine.

Think about a hungry infant. The child truly cannot imagine anything worse than what's happening right now. S/he is hungry! It's awful! They wail, they howl, and when the food comes, every fiber of their being relaxes. When the same child gets a little older, the wailing and howling is gone. The child has realized that the hunger doesn't last forever. Maybe they get moody or grumpy, but they don't shriek. By the time they're adults, they could be famished, but they'll be able to stand around a party making chit chat while they wait. They've learned that hunger is temporary and really not that difficult to cope with.

Teens and young adults sometimes can't see past what they're feeling right at the moment. Everything is magnified. Every pain feels like the end of the world.

I have little patience with people who tell me that adolescence itself, or the exclusion, teasing and outright rudeness that comes with it, is harder for gay kids. True, no one teases heterosexual kids about being heterosexual, but there's plenty of other reasons. Ask the fat kids, the special ed kids, the poor kids, the unattractive kids, the awkward kids.

It's totally socially acceptable to be obnoxious to certain kinds of people. Recently, while spending time with a teenage kid I truly like, one who usually champions the underdog and befriends the friendless, this kid made a surprising remark about a very portly individual who had just gone by. When asked why they thought that particular comment was appropriate, eyes rolled, and the explanation was, "It's not a handicap, it's a lifestyle choice." As a person of considerable mass myself, you don't want to get me started on the variety of ways other people have expressed their opinions about my size, from the outright obnoxious to the supposedly supportive. I'd love to say that behavior was relegated to those who haven't yet reached adulthood, but that would be laughably false. Many otherwise reasonable people see nothing wrong with that, either. They believe that I have chosen to be fat and therefore have chosen to be ridiculed, or they believe that their rude behavior is somehow helpful and motivational, and will cause me to change. After all, "it's a lifestyle choice."

What if something truly is a lifestyle choice? Does that mean that anything goes, behaviorwise?

That same reasoning extends to anyone who looks markedly different than the speaker's preference. I've seen clean cut, wholesome looking folks exhibit vicious behavior toward the dyed, pierced, outlandishly clothed set, and I've seen the outlandish ones heap vicious behavior upon the Cleaver-looking ones. After all, they reason, if you choose to be obviously different than me, it should just be a given that I will not only have a problem with that but that I will express this displeasure freely.

Ask any kid whose family doesn't have money how they're treated in school. For most of my life, I only owned one pair of pants at a time. When I was in 9^th grade, the boy who sat behind me in my science class pointed that fact out, loudly, every day. I was treated to comments like, "Don't those smell?" Gee, thanks, kid. I finally insisted on being taken to buy another pair – no easy feat when your household income consists of your dad's pension and your mom's 20 hour a week job. Hand me downs were OK with my dad, but buying secondhand was not, so new clothes were expensive. I made sure, for the rest of high school, to always own two pairs of pants, and to wear one on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the other on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Sunday I wore a dress; occasionally I'd wear one to school, just to avoid wearing my pants.

Ask kids for their stories about what it's like if your family's on welfare, lives in a trailer or wears outdated fashions. Again, you'll run into that idea that if the kids don't want to be treated that way, well, their parents should simply make more money. They should also just expect to be teased and excluded – that's "just how things are."

This is not to say that the wealthy kids or popular ones get off scot free. Jealousy causes some truly abhorrent behavior. Ask any kid whose prized 16^th birthday car has been vandalized. Ask a cheerleader who's been the subject of rumors.

Religion is another magnet issue for intolerance and bad behavior. So, unfortunately, are physical handicaps, and mental disabilities often bring out the very worst in those around them. I am sure that everyone can instantly recall instances of mocking aimed at these kids, especially if their speech or movement is affected. Often, this too is seen as "normal" and in "good fun." Develop a tough skin, kids are told when they're hurt. This is just life.

I'm tired of hearing about what is "normal." Cancer is normal. It's afflicted humans (and animals) throughout history. All disease, filth, decay and death is normal. Does that mean that we elevate it to the status of desirable?

Now, in the wake of these recent publicized lost lives, when we should be trying very hard to pull together, I'm hearing and seeing another layer to the divisiveness that I've encountered for years. It infuriates me.

Now it is becoming even more acceptable to attack others based on their religious beliefs, if those beliefs include the tenet that homosexuality is wrong. That covers one heck of a lot of people, belonging to a whole lot of religions. Naturally, it's most prevalent, and most vicious, among kids. "It's the fault of people like YOU that gay kids are killing themselves," kids say to their friends, classmates and acquaintances, even if those kids have never done any bullying.

An LDS (Mormon) leader said, in a televised church meeting, that the church's stance is (and always has been) that homosexual behavior is considered sinful. Since then, things have been more difficult for LDS kids, especially high school students. "It's because of your church that people are committing suicide!" they're told. "Your church leaders are killing kids." "These suicides are your fault."

Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. It's OK for YOU to freely express your opinion, on TV, in print, in person, over the Internet, but it's NOT OK for people who disagree with you to do the same? It's not only acceptable, but encouraged, for you to say that being homosexual is acceptable to God, but it ISN'T acceptable for anyone else to say that it's abhorrent to Him? It's OK for you to say that the LDS religion, or any religion, is responsible for personal despair, but it's NOT acceptable for anyone else to say that your philosophy, your beliefs, are wrong?

I cannot tell you how often I pose these questions and people say, "Well, of course it's wrong to bully or attack someone, but I'm just trying to prevent more deaths." Never yet have I found a speaker who's OK being told, "Well, of course it's wrong to bully or attack someone, but I'm just trying to keep souls from going to hell."

If you think I'm kidding, find an LDS teen; ask them what's been said to them, and around them, at school. People are angry, and they want someone to blame.

A gay and lesbian group staged a demonstration, dressed all in black and laying on the sidewalk around LDS Church headquarters, "representing all the gay youth lost to suicide." Church leaders handled it with quiet grace, fully supporting their legal right to assemble. I wonder if a demonstration staged by religious youth, wearing chains and shackles representing sin and condemnation, would be similarly received around the headquarters of any gay and lesbian group.

LISTEN UP. Let us all be perfectly clear. It is not, and should not, be morally or legally wrong to disagree. Societies that forbid dissent or differing opinions are called totalitarian, repressive, dictatorships. WE DO NOT ALL HAVE TO AGREE. THERE IS NOTHING MORALLY OR LEGALLY WRONG WITH DISAGREEMENT. It should be possible to be civil to others, and to support their right to their beliefs and behavior, without sharing them. No one kills themselves simply because others disagree with them, or because others voice an opposing opinion.

It is imperative to a peaceful, productive future that we all get a handle on this simple, basic truth: we just treat those who disagree with us with the same civility and respect we would like to receive for our opinions.

If you can, and should, speak your mind, so should those who disagree with you. Civilly. Without name calling. Without venom.

Standardized Tests

 

Every time I tell someone that I think public education would be improved by having fewer standardized tests and fewer federally mandated "standards," they are horrified. "How would you measure progress? Where's the accountability?"

There are few clearer cut instances of less = more. I was a kid when they first introduced the idea of standardized tests. Has education improved dramatically over the last 30 years? That is clearly not the case.

Remember the famous judge's response to defining obscenity, that he couldn't give you a dictionary definition, but "I know it when I see it"? For generations, education functioned the same way. You knew it was working, or not, by interacting with the students or the adults they became. I've known very bright, accomplished kids in honors trigonometry classes who can't make change. How many people do you know who struggle to calculate a tip, or divide a dinner tab? A friend of mine was horrified by watching two teens in a store try to figure out how much something that was 80% off cost. Finally, she interrupted their conversation to say, "It means it costs $2 for every $10 on the original price! If it was $100, now it's $20." One teen responded, "Wow. I'm in honors calculus, and I didn't even know you could do that."

Some kids blow off the tests because they aren't graded, some admit to randomly filling in bubbles because they're bored, some have test anxiety. Yet I routinely hear that everything, including teacher salaries, should be tied to these tests, to performance on a single occasion.

Last year, the students in my friend's daughter's third grade class were offered an ice cream party if they raised their test scores by at least a grade level. The bigger difference, the more toppings you earned for your ice cream.

At the beginning of the year, his daughter scored at seventh grade level, four years above her age. At the end of the year, she scored at an eighth grade level. She earned ice cream, but no toppings, because she'd "only" increased her score by one year. Her father confronted her teachers, but they stood their ground. The only answer they gave when he asked, "Did you teach her 7^th or 8^th grade material? How was she supposed to score at a higher level if you didn't teach her the material?" was, "She should be very proud of her scores." Chocolate syrup and sprinkles count for more than "proud" does when you're in 3^rd grade.

Then there's what the tests can't measure. Take, for instance, my daughter:

In elementary school, if she was given an assignment to read about Johnny visiting his grandparents on their farm and then asked, "Where did Johnny go?" she was likely to answer, "Swimming." At first glance, that kind of answer makes it seem that she was hopelessly lost. Ask her to explain, however, and you were likely to get an extensive answer. "Well, it says that Johnny went to their farm and he helped feed all the animals and pick the corn, and after he did that I think he'd be hot and tired, and it said that there was a pond for the ducks, so I think Johnny went swimming in the duck pond because he was hot and tired." Obviously, this is a child who not only understood the material, but has taken her understanding farther than necessary. Still, the answer "swimming" will be marked wrong on any standardized test – indeed, on virtually any assignment.