Suburban Kamikaze

Uncontainable

Dear Container Store:

I know you mean well, with your dozen varieties of hooks and $49 cereal sorters, but this just isn't going to work.

It's not you, and I apologize if I gave you the wrong idea when we first met in that gleaming Dallas showroom.

You caught me looking. I admit I was checking you out.  There was something seductive about all that sparkling acrylic, each piece nestled suggestively into the next. The collapsible come-on of the day-glo laundry sorters took my breath away.

It was as close to obscene as a storage system could come.  

And then there were all those other women, hanging on your every closet accessory. They couldn't get enough. They were three-deep at the registers, their faces flush with your shiny, stackable promises.

God, how I wanted to believe.

I ran my fingers over your nested bins. My pulse raced at your take-charge innovations for taming closet clutter. I found myself reaching for your pantry devices. I was overcome with desire for things I had never felt before. I was ready to take you home, throw open the dark recesses of my basement, open my drawers and let you into places so long neglected, I no longer knew what they contained. 

But I knew, even as I gasped at the sight of your sleekly muscular shelving unit, that we were not right for each other.

I have to be honest with myself. The organizational deficit in my house is not that it isn't colorful enough. I could line the hallways end to end with fuschia and melon laundry bins but it would not increase the chances of a dirty sock ending up in one. 

It is not your fault. The underside of the couch emits a strange gravitational pull. It is stronger than both of us. We can't fight it.

The garbage bag under the sink, on the other hand, seems to project an outwardly directed force that prevents trash from reaching its interior, while the inside of the pantry looks as if we hired squirrels to open our cereal boxes. Do you really think your gleaming polycarbonate cannisters could make a difference here? 

We would have had a weekend together at most. And then, we'd only end up blaming each other.

It doesn't take much to see that the storage problems of one suburban household don't amount to a cannister of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that.  

We'll always have Dallas.

SK

Photo (top): Here's looking at you, lid.

Photo (right): Of all the hampers in all the stores, in all the world, she had to crawl into mine.

Bravo, bravo, bravissimo

I hadn't even pulled off the tags yet, when this story from the Dallas Morning News caught my attention.

It was the 40th anniversary of the protest outside the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City that gave rise to the concept of "bra burning."

"Concept" because apparently no bras were actually set aflame during the protest, but were thrown into a garbage can along with other symbols of female oppression that included high heels, tweezers, bras, girdles and corsets. 

Meanwhile, my sisters-in-law, my sister-in-law's sisters and I spent the weekend tearing up the Texas asphalt in search of retail opportunities and I had struck the mother lode at a department store lingerie sale.

The haul included one pink, one ivory, one black and one black and white "balconette," which is like a slutty little balcony for your breasts.

As a symbol of oppression, the bra has long since outlived its usefulness. Better to set fire to your family's laundry than your own.

Still, like an ill-fitting bra hook, the irony left me with a teeny tiny stab of something like shame.

In lifting my profile, had I let down the side? How many bras are you allowed to own before someone comes around to revoke your feminist credentials? And do I get any credit for not buying the matching underwear?

There are no brunettes in Dallas

You cannot spend more than a few hours in this city before you begin to wonder how you would look as a blonde.

The women here have the most beautiful blonde on blonde highlights. The reflected light alone is more sun than I have felt on my face in three years of living in Chicago. You can get a pretty good tan just basking in line at Starbucks.

It is a big weekend here deep in the heart of Texas. Because everything here really is bigger. The sky is huge, the streets are as wide as parking lots and the parking lots, well, they are big.

I know this because my sister-in-law, my other sister-in-law and my sister-in-law's many, many sisters and I have spent the weekend driving around in big cars shopping for really, really big purses. Those New York city women have nothing on Dallas when it comes to the size of their handbags. 

Which may explain why my sister-in-law, Pamela Ewing, decided that the occasion of her daughter's high school graduation called for a really, really big party. So we are all here; my mom, my brothers, their wives, their kids, my kids and my sister-in-law's mom and dad, four sisters, a brother, their spouses and their children.

I know it sounds like too many people. But the truth is, it didn't really start to go over the top until she began inviting the neighbors. Which can seem like a really good idea after your third can of Coors Light. Or so I imagine. I do not share my sister-in-law's taste in beer. 

We are packed in wall to wall, sprawled on couches and sleeping bags and air mattresses and enjoying the kind of family camaraderie that you can only reach after three days of sharing a bathroom with 11 people.

But a hotel would be out of the question. Because in between the shopping and the fireworks and the frosty beers on the patio, the Iowans whip up what must be hundreds of pounds of potato salad and barbecue chicken and pork tenderloins with raspberry sauce and pulled pork with an honest-to-God prize winning barbecue sauce that must be prepared in secret, cookies and pancakes and scrambled eggs and bacon and something called "walking tacos" that really deserves an entry all to itself.

They are a machine in the kitchen and nobody ever stops eating or drinkng long enough to think about a hotel.

We the family,

in order to survive the holiday weekend, for which some of us have endured interminable flights and are sleeping on couches, to establish a new record for the continuous consumption of snack food, provide for the equitable distribution of bathroom time and promote the falsehood that it is a good idea to pack 27 family members under one roof, do ordain and establish this Constitution:

Article I

The family shall make no law abridging the freedom of other family members to shoot their mouths off, spill family secrets and otherwise embarrass themselves and others in ways that can be retold at future family gatherings. This includes the right of uppity Miami women to make Midwestern jokes in a room full of her brother's Iowan in-laws. She should not, however, expect anyone to come rushing to her defense should they turn on her in one corn-fed mass.

Article II

A well-lubricated family being necessary to the sanity of any gathering that includes more than four people who still remember the name of your ninth-grade crush and are not afraid to use it, the right of the adults to keep and bear drinks shall not be infringed at any hour. 

Article III

The quartering of more than 27 family members under one roof shall be discouraged, even if you do have a tent in the back yard. 

Article IV

The right of the little sisters to be secure in their suitcases against the unreasonable searches and seizures of their belongings by their brothers and cousins shall not be violated, except when no one is looking.

Article V

No family member shall be forced to give evidence against themselves with regard to who drank the last lime-flavored Bud Light. No person shall be held to answer for having consumed the last lime-flavored Bud Light except on a presentment or indictment by a Grand Jury consisting of whoever made the last beer run.  

Article VI

In all family disagreements, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public airing of the most embarrassing things they have said or done since high school.  Photographic evidence is encouraged.

Article VII

Shopping by Jury: When the value in controversy shall exceed $25, a jury of your sisters-in-law shall be called to answer the question of How Many Purses are Too Many. The opinion of brothers, husbands and other male family members shall be inadmissible.

Article VIII

It shall be considered cruel and unusual punishment to impose upon the adult women of the family the obligation to undergo continuous "makeovers" at the hands of the 10-year-old girls. Uncle Mike, however, is fair game as he seems to enjoy it and looks good in a tiara. 

Article IX

The enumeration of these rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the family. Also, the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Championship does not constitute a real sport  for the purposes of monopolizing the television.

Article X

The secret ingredient of Grandma Saul's potato salad is pototoes.* 

Photo: Dibs on the air mattress.

*Aunt Cindy gave it up. Next we are sending her in for Bob's prize-winning barbecue sauce.

The world's shortest truce

Mommy had to work late. She comes home to 12-hours of pent-up demands.

Daddy was home, but had apparently forgotten to deactivate his cloaking device. He was invisible to the children.

They are hungry. They are irritated. But mostly, they are poised for war.

They have been waiting patiently all day. An extra cell phone has been charging on the counter in plain sight. A tactical error on the part of the adults. All day long the children have been stealing glances at it, touching it, running their sticky fingers over its display. Now it is time.

The fourth grader rushes to be first.  

"Mom I should have the extra phone because I am younger and I will not lose it and that way I can call you and tell you where I am and can I have it?"

The middle schooler is indignant with disbelief. "I asked first," he says. "I asked you for a cell phone a long time ago. She does not need a cell phone. Why does she need a cell phone? "

"Whoa," says their mother, waving bags of fast food at them. "Who said anything about either one of you getting a cell phone?"

They are not distracted. 

"I am the only 13-year-old in the world without a cell phone."

The fourth grader accuses him of exaggeration. He accuses her of being obtuse and explains, in his you-are-an-idiot voice, the concept of hyperbole. "I am exaggerating a little bit to make a point," he says, drawing out the syllables in "exaggerating."

"A little bit?" she says. "There are 6.5 billion people in the world."

Well played, thinks her mother. But she does not yet realize that they have begun an argument that will play uninterrupted for the next 45 minutes, from her very first bite of fast-food salad to the last. (Which, as long as we are playing for sympathy here, I will tell you, was the first thing she had eaten that day.)

That was yesterday. Today, she will spend four hours sitting between them on an airplane, on a trip that the middle-schooler has already declared is "stupid" and a huge imposition on his summer schedule, which as far as his mother can tell, is devoted to one long argument. (Why doesn't his sister have to mow the lawn? He has too been practicing his violin. Why can't he have a cell phone?)

The fourth grader can sense the mother's mood. Which is to say she senses opportunity. She will audition for the role of Most Likely to Be Given the Cell Phone.

"Let's have a truce," she suggests sweetly.

Her mother raises an eyebrow hopefully. Her position on sucking up is that it should be encouraged.

But Boy Esq. has already found his angle. He position on truce is that it should be avoided.   

"I get the window seat."

Photo: Jockeying for pouch position

American Churl

Summer, 2006

The mother and her daughter are just in from St. Louis on a bus carrying the daughter's Girl Scout troop.

The girl and her doll are costumed in matching silk kimono-style dresses in powder blue ($48 and $24) waiting to have their portrait taken for a mock cover of "American Girl Magazine." ($21.95)

"What doll do you have?" the girl demands as soon as we sit next to them in the studio waiting area. "Is that last year's doll?"

My niece isn't sure. At 7, she is, thankfully, too young to associate "last year's" with any kind of negative connotation. She is carrying "Marisol," barefooted and outfitted in a casual Friday ensemble.

We are here, along with my 8-year-old daughter because her cousin is visiting and any trip through Chicago for a girl under 12 means a mandatory pilgrimage  to American Girl Place.

The dolls are ubiquitous here in the summer. You can't throw a hairbrush on Michigan Avenue without hitting an overdressed little doll and her matching American girl.

The mother smiles at me with expectant camaraderie. We are both here with little girls and dolls in tow to worship in the temple of Glamorous Girlhood. "Did you see the show?" she asks. "It was so good, I cried," she confesses.

"They had girls our girls' ages acting out the parts."

We have not seen the American Girl stage production, but it is a safe bet that there is nothing in this place that could make me cry, other than my Visa bill.

On the other side, a mother with an expensive blonde haircut carefully applies lip gloss (Great Smile Lip Shine set $13.50) to her daughter's mouth. Her daughter also has a girl/doll matching ensemble, in pink satin ($44 and $24).

Her doll is "Kit" and had, according to her American girl backstory, grown up in the years of the Great Depression, where she faced hardship with "spirit and determination" and presumably fewer accessories.

That is the intellectual conceit behind the American Girl concept.

The dolls, each with their own series of paperback adventures ($6.95),  represent a period of American history.

There is Molly, a "patriotic girl who grows up on the homefront during World War II."

Kirsten is "a brave and pioneering spirit (who) settles on the American frontier."

Addy is a "courageous girl who escapes slavery in the midst of the Civil War.

There is also Jess, Samantha, Nellie, Kaya, Josefina, Felicity and Elizabeth, plus a line of "Bitty" babies ($42).

In addition to their books, each character has a wide collection of pricey period accessories, costumes and furniture.

My daughter has read a few of the books, which are adequately-told stories, if not particularly chock-full of history. I did like the companion reference books for each period, which include facts and photographs that describe the way children lived and played at the time.

But while American Girl Place would be a rich source of material for anthropologists of the future, it would be a monumental stretch to imply that the constant stream of sparkly, well-coiffed and designer-clad little girls here is partaking of anything like a history lesson.

Today's lesson girls, is strictly retail. (New on the American Girl bookshelf: A Smart Girl's Guide to Money: How to make it, save and spend it, $9.95)

For one thing, the best selling doll seems to be the one that has no history at all. Instead "she's just like you!" For $100 this doll comes in 17 varieties of hair, eye and skin color and includes a fluffy white designer dog named "Coconut."

"Choose a doll that matches your look and spirit inside and out," coaches the catalogue.

My daughter did. (Here's Why I Feel Superior to the Other Mommies at American Girl Place, Part One: I did not buy her the doll. She spent her own Christmas money.)

She chose a blue-eyed, blonde-haired girl in embroidered jeans and a pink windbreaker. She named her Julie.

I don't hear any of these little girls discussing history. 

I desperately want to ask Kit's little girl about the Depression.

But I don't.  For one thing, her mother is too chirpily self-conscious about the whole thing.  She wants to bond with me in our mutual embarrasment. You don't  have to be the president of the National Organization for Women to feel like there is something creepy about the way this place makes a fetish of glamorizing little girls.

You'd think the Girls Scouts would know better, I think,  like the hypocrite I am.

But she has sized me up wrong. Because I have another reason to feel superior. (Why I Feel Superior, Part Two: Not only are my girls not wearing lip gloss, I haven't even combed their hair. It doesn't look like Marisol or Julie have seen a hairbrush since they came out of their boxes.)

At first, it bugs me that I am spending $47 for photographs of two girls who still have lunch crumbs on their face and whose hair looks like it hasn't been brushed since yesterday. Then the blonde Mommy brings out the lip gloss and I resolve to do nothing to improve their appearance.

Finally it is their turn. I am not invited in until after the session. Then perky photographer Mary Ellen calls me in to choose from two poses.

"I like the first one because the dolls are looking right at the camera," she says, pointing to her computer screen. I start to laugh. Working here has not destroyed her sense of irony at least.

Then I realize she is not joking.

"They're not looking at anything," I say. "They're not real. They're dolls."

My daughter gives me a look I am seeing more and more these days. It says "You are Embarrassing Me AGAIN."

I tell Mary Ellen I prefer the second pose. The girls object, having instinctively bought into Mary Ellen's more professional view.

But I stand firm, or at least for what passes as "firm" in a store where the best you can hope for is to get out for under $100 and before your girls notice the Doll Salon.

"Look!" screams my daughter. "A doll salon!."

A semicircle of tiny barber's chairs line a countertop.  Two "stylists" behind the counter are combing, braiding and misting the hair of nearly identical dolls. For $10 to $20 dollars, they will arrange the dolls' hair into one of four styles: braided down, braided tucked, a ponytail or a flip. "Complete brush out and tangle removal" is included. The secret, according to one of the stylists, is in the water misting. "Never, ever," she tells the little girls watching her earnestly, "comb your doll's hair while it is dry."

I tell one of the little girls in line that when I was a girl, we styled our dolls' hair ourselves, including haircuts. Sometimes we just kept cutting until it was gone. She looks at me, horrified. "Did it grow back?"

I tell the girls there is no way we are paying $20 to have their dolls' hair braided.

Again, I stand firm.

We head back into the boutique, where they run their hands over every matching outfit in the store, sparkly denim jackets, flouncy pink dance dresses, an orgy of sequins, lace, embroidery. There is a wall of "spa products" for "real beauty inside and out."

"Do you want to go downstairs and look at the history dolls?" I ask in a futile effort to avoid looking at the price tags. "Let's go pick out a book."

Their faces drop. I am not in the American Girl spirit. I am sucking all of the glamour out of the experience for them. I sigh, then turn the tag over on a simple pink t-shirt that proclaims "American Girl Place" under a shooting star trailing silver rhinestones. It is $24, plus $8 for the doll version. I cave, they shriek.

I am out of reasons to feel superior.

Then my husband tells me he overheard a mother browsing a window display with her daughter. "Look," the mother said, pointing to a new doll. "There's one you don't have yet."

© 2007 Suburban Kamikaze

This is your guidance counselor's brain on drugs

I once had a guidance counselor tell me not to sweat the math classes too much because I had decided to pursue a career in journalism and wasn't going to need it. 

Then I got my first newspaper job and my editors were all "hey, we're going to need 15 inches on the new city budget and make sure you read all 688 pages and calculate all the spending increases as a percentage of the property tax base multiplied by the per capita something something something ..."

And I was like, "hey, they told me there wasn't going to be any math."

But my guidance counselor was King Solomon compared to the geniuses at El Camino High School in California, who recently went along with a plan to trick students into thinking a bunch of their classmates had been killed in car accidents. The fake fatalities were part of a plan to traumatize students so badly that they would never even think about getting behind the wheel if they'd been drinking.

"They were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized," explained guidance counselor Lori Tauber. "That's how they get the message."

Yes, except the message here seems to be that school officials and highway patrol officers had to invent casualties to make drunk driving seem dangerous. 

Also: your guidance counselor is not to be trusted.

Photo: whatscookingamerica.net

Was it good for you?

 

This is Charla Muller. She is a very busy woman.

She is so busy that she couldn't even find the time to run out to Brookstone and buy a giant remote control for her husband's 40th birthday.

She was forced to improvise. She came up with this: She promised to have sex with him every single day for a year.

Personally, I would have had the kids glue something together with popsicle sticks and glitter paint. You can't go wrong with children's arts and crafts for last minute gift ideas. 

But for whatever reason - maybe she was out of craft glue or maybe she just panicked - Charla went for broke. 

It might have ended there. Charla Muller could have reneged. Assuming her husband is not a contract lawyer, she could have tried to impose terms after the fact. She could have simply put out day after day after day, and kept it to herself.

But no. Charla Muller decided to write a book. Now the rest of us will spend the rest of the summer subjected to an endless conversation about how many times a year everyone else is having sex. Like sexual slackers Annie and Douglas Brown, who managed only 100 straight days of domestic relations before throwing in the sticky towel. But still managed to score a book deal.

I don't know about you, but this idea makes me want to have sex like the Ernest Shackleton expedition makes me want to go on a cruise.

Muller describes her year of sexual profligacy as "a really meaningful lesson."  Ouch.

Who does not cringe for Mr. Muller upon reading that?

Douglas Brown says the experience left him with "less of a sense of having to perform."

Really Douglas? Because complete strangers are now going to be asking your wife if you are any good. And we will know if she's faking it.

Family Outing Noir

She left for what should have been a pleasant family outing with a sense of foreboding.

What accounted for it, she could not say. Other than experience.

It might have been the argument, just after breakfast, over whether the seventh-grader should have to mow the lawn before they left.

It was the seventh-grader's position that he should not.

First of all, he had nothing to wear. All of his clothes were in the laundry and until the laundry was finished, he could not possibly mow the lawn.

Secondly, when was his sister going to be old enough to mow the lawn? 

And finally, he would mow the lawn, but now was not a good time. 

His father, making no attempt to weigh the merits of anything that came after the laundry part, dismisses all three arguments in a crisp and decisive rebuttal.   

But while the unpleasantness and sulking that followed was certain to follow them throughout the day in bits and pieces of randomly inserted acrimony, it was hardly out of the ordinary. It could not fully explain her feeling that disaster loomed over this day like a fourth-grader hovering over a 12-pack of ice cream bars, waiting for a break in supervision. 

Maybe it was the vomiting.

"How many fudgesicles did you eat?," she asks the fourth-grader, while paper toweling a section of the floor covered in viscous chocolate slime.

"I'm not going to eat any more," the fourth-grader replies. 

She had briefly considered staying home. Maybe this was a bad idea. What makes her think they can pull this off? Was it hope? Delusion? Willful ignorance of precedent?

She knows before they have closed the door behind them that it will end badly. Or at least in tears. There will be blood. Or possibly ketchup. 

But something compels her forward in the elaborate pretense that this four-sided arrangement of competing interests, unpredictable moods and irritating personality traits called family can rise above its grievances  and enjoy a day without incident.

Other people managed it. She'd heard stories.

They will go to the book fair. Because other than experience, the lingering bad feelings left by the lawn mowing argument and the vomiting, there was no reason to believe it could not work.

It was the first weekend in forever that the weather made such an outing even plausible, for one thing. Was that ... the sun?

It would rain. There was little question of that. Or that she would be the only one with a raincoat. Which she would end up giving to the fourth-grader who has refused to bring her own.  Who will wear it all through her cheeseburger and fries lunch.

It is a chic little number in two-toned ivory, with contrasting cuffs that drape into the ketchup when the fourth-grader reaches across the table to spill her root beer.

The coat is a crime scene. Crimson blotches transfer from cuff to hem.

She never saw it coming.

Photo by Rick McCawley