Kathleen Norton November 30, 2009 -
Boomer Times: Memories of a commode commandoMy grandmother lived through nearly the entire 20th century, and she saw some incredible inventions.
Spaceships. Color TV. Dishwashers. Microwaves. Ring Dings.
But she did not live long enough to see the one thing I think she might have appreciated the most: A toilet seat with an automatic covering. I discovered them last week at O'Hare Airport in Chicago and the first thing I could think of was: Boy, would my grandmother love this! She was a commode commando of the highest order and we weren't allowed to enter a public restroom until she had covered every surface with reams of paper.
The new device is a toilet whose seat is completely covered with plastic. With a wave of your hand at a sensor, the plastic rotates around to new, clean covering for every startled user.
And that's exactly what I was when I rushed into the ladies room at O'Hare, having spent the flight from Albany guzzling down my diet soda and every single available ice cube on the plane.
I opened a stall door, waved my hand and presto! I had a sanitary and germ-free commode - in an airport bathroom of all places!
Don't believe me? All you have to do is a quick search on YouTube and about a dozen videos will pop up from O'Hare. My extensive investigation into this matter, another six seconds on Google, could find no other locations.
I can only hope that these devices catch on because thanks to my grandmother , I can't use even the most elegant public restroom without fondly thinking of her, while cringing with fear at the same time.
Not exactly a Hallmark moment.
She'd pick her granddaughters up on a Saturday for some shopping back in the days when you wore your best dress, white gloves and patent leather shoes for such an outing. At some point, she'd lead us into a public bathroom, burst into a stall like she was on Dragnet and go to town with her roll of toilet paper.
With four of us lined up to use the facilities, this could take awhile. My poor grandfather waited outside. "If you're not back in two hours, I'll send in a search team,'' he would say. And he was serious.
My grandmother's routine may have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of trees, but she didn't care. She was saving her granddaughters from yucky toilet seats.
It's no wonder that on driving trips, I make my poor husband hopscotch from rest stop to rest stop looking for one that passes the grandma test.
On that note, listeners, the Molly Pitcher rest area near Exit 8 on the Jersey Turnpike gets four stars.
Molly Pitcher was a revolutionary war heroine but that's a minor detail. All you need to know is that for her bravery, her name is on Jersey's cleanest public bathroom.
The only way it can be improved is if they installed the gizmos like the ones at O'Hare.
I guess I should tell you that eventually, I did pull myself away from the bathrooms at O'Hare and enjoyed the rest of my first trip to to the windy city. But I would have gone there year ago if I'd known what awaited me at the airport.
So if you're going there sometime soon and you fly into O'Hare, check out the bathrooms.
Wave your hand. Watch the plastic cover go around. Thank goodness that you live in such amazing times. Then think of me, And my grandmother, too.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley.
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October 26, 2009 -
Boomer Times: 30th ReunionIf you were a fly on the wall at my recent 30th college reunion here's what you heard:
Whispers about who else had some "work'' done on their face.
Lots of punchlines about Viagra.
Shock over what's happened to our 401K's. Some more shock over Geico TV commercials starring our rocker Peter Frampton.
The ludicrous things our own kids have done in college, topped only by the ludicrous things we did when we were in college.
The reunion weekend began with lots of pleasantries among alumni who were all born at the peak of the baby boom in 1957.
Some of us are now grandparents though a few of us are even new parents for the first time.
In the group were bankers and lawyers and postmen. There were teachers and journalists, salesmen and social workers. We pulled out the yearbooks, looked at the thinner, shaggier-haired versions of ourselves and came to a major conclusion:
We never thought we'd turn into our parents. But somehow, we have.
After that sobering reality check, we moved on to how much things had changed since we put on our caps and gowns and walked down the aisle in 1979.
Back then, somebody joked, it was a Britney Spears-free world and when you said the word "text,'' you were talking about a book.
We all laughed at that, except for the guy who had stepped aside to look at his Blackberry.
Finally, we got down to what we really had all showed up for: A chance to relive the good ol' days and to feel like we were still 19. Boy, there were some wild tales to tell.
There were lots of stories about road trips taken in big 1970's sedans in which seat belts were never worn and a dorm full of people could squeeze in for a ride to the beer store or the pizzeria.
There was the story about the 12-foot Christmas tree that was hoisted with ropes seven stories up the outside of a dorm because the tree wouldn't fit up the inside stairs.
There was also the one about the students who accepted a dare to climb outside a window and do pull-ups on a window frame, about 80 feet in the air. Why? Because it was more fun than homework, I suppose.
And what reunion of this group would be complete without the retelling of the Great Train Heist.
As the story goes, a boxcar loaded with cases of beer broke down on the tracks near the campus. When a campus full of students made this discovery let's just say the Olympics have never seen people move that fast.
The cast of Animal House had nothing on this group. Yes, there was hell to pay later on. But that somehow gets downplayed in the retelling and the story has become a classic in the annals of college folklore.
Especially the part where the students who found the beer marched into the campus cafeteria the next morning singing, "We've been working on the railroad!''
All these stories prove the point that college is an educating experience, but it's not always about the kind of education you think.
At the end of the weekend, we put away our college sweatshirts and our stories until they next time we can get together and dust them off. And even though it's only been a few weeks, I can't wait to hear some of those tales again.
We may not get better with age, but stories like the Great Train Heist always do.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley.
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August 28, 2009 -
Boomer Times: Hanging by a threadOk, all you middle-aged women out there: Listen up!
Disaster may be lurking at your local mall. I know because I ran right smack into it and my tale of woe can be a lesson for us all.
It began with something sprouting from my chin.
It's a cruel fact of middle age life for the female gender. You turn 50 and suddenly, there are hairy intruders on your face and you spent way too much time experimenting with tweezers, wax, or whatever it takes to do the job.
So it's no wonder that the little kiosk in the middle of the mall caught my attention. It advertised a procedure called threading.
Yes, you heard me right. T-h-r-e-a-d-i-n-g - a middle eastern technique where they take a length of thread, roll and twist it quick as lightning around unwanted facial hair and pull it out by the root.
It's a major league ouch, but as they say, "No pain, no gain,'' and I was willing to try.
As I stepped up to the kiosk, I thought, "Hmm. There is no screen or curtain. Maybe this isn't such a great idea.''
As a girlfriend of mine later put it so delicately: "What are you an idiot?''
But one of those darn chin hairs was growing longer by the minute. I looked both ways, saw no one, jumped into the chair and let the threading lady get to work.
She was halfway done when out of nowhere, some people wearing athletic shoes and spandex outfits came upon us.
They were mall walkers. Very nosy mall walkers. Some of the women headed to the kiosk then leaned in so close to get a look that I could count their cavities.
"Hey Betty,'' one yelled to another. "Squeeze in here. You gotta see this.''
That's when the men mall walkers came over for a look-see.
"Well, I'll be darned!'' one said.
"Is she sewing hair on that poor gal?'' said his friend.
I wanted to scream: "The hair's coming off, not going on, moron!''
A few more people stopped by and pretty soon we had a mini crowd control problem on our hands.
Now, for the threading lady, this spectacle was great marketing. For me, it was the single most embarrassing moment of my life, and that's even counting the time I gave birth in a room full of nursing students on an obstetrics field trip.
"Are you OK?'' the threading lady whispered when I started to sweat and twitch.
"Thread faster, would ya?'' I hissed while plotting to take a mall walker hostage and fight my way out.
That idea got ditched because it would cause more attention and I could see the headlines: Lady at mall detained in chin hair debacle. I stayed quiet and just screamed inside my head.
Finally, the procedure was over but the ordeal was not.
The walkers-turned-gawkers strode after me. "Did it hurt? Was it expensive? Would I do it again?" they wanted to know.
As I tried and failed to outrun them, I called out my answers:
Yes, it hurt.
No, it wasn't expensive.
And sure, I'd do it again, but only if the threading lady sets up shop in a dark underground cave. Until then, I don't care if I turn into the bearded lady in the circus and people stare.
After all, I've had plenty of experience in that department.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley.
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July 24, 2009 -
Boomer Times: On the road again….a boomer retrospectiveMaybe it was all those family cars going by with DVD players entertaining the kids in the back seat.
Maybe it was the fact that they could go through EZ-Pass and pay tolls without cracking a window and barely slowing down. Whatever the reason, the people we saw on a driving vacation this summer made me think of the differences between family road trips now, and the family road trips of my childhood.
Those boomer-era trips were 40 years ago, but the memories are as sharp as the elbow my brother used to shove in my ribs as we scrapped in a crowded backseat, with not a seatbelt or airbag in sight.
Every June, my parents would lock up the house, give the neighbor a number for our hotel and drive for three hours from northern New Jersey to the Jersey shore.
We kids were crammed in, but not so tight that we couldn't climb over each other to throw coins out the window and into the tollbooth baskets on the Garden State Parkway.
The coin toss competition was the highlight of the trip, second only to holding up goofy signs to the strangers in other cars, our early version of social networking.
"Whose turn is it?'' my father would shout as he approached each toll.
One time, the coins hit the edge of the basket, bounced off and shot back into the car like little silver missiles. "Be careful!'' my father yelled. "You'll poke somebody's eye out!''
Of course, one of us could have slammed our heads into the bunker-like concrete tollbooths. We could have been propelled like rockets if the car had stopped short.
But my parents didn't think about those things back then. It was the 1960s. Nobody did.
One year, my father got a promotion and bought a big sedan that had power windows, air conditioning and built in ashtrays for the comfort of our chain-smoking relatives.
Other kids on the block used to come around to watch the windows go up and down.
In this car, the road trips were a bit more comfy, though still not safe by today's standards. The car had seatbelts, but we never saw them. They were shoved between the seats, which is exactly where they belonged, according to my grandmother.
She pronounced that seatbelts would wrinkle your clothes AND keep you from escaping a car when it was about to explode, safety tips she would impart on us while puffing on a cigarette.
Every once in a while, a fight would break out in the back seat and my father would reach around to blindly swat at us.
He didn't care if he got the instigator. If you got a swat meant for somebody else this time, they took one meant for you the next time.
The swatting evened out in the end.
Occasionally, our grandparents would squeeze in as well and my grandmother was apt to break out into a song and make us all join in to pass the time.
So there we were: Nine unrestrained people hurdling down the highway, singing a rousing chorus of random Irish folk songs and throwing change out the window at a toll booth.
DVD players and EZ-Pass be damned. It doesn't get any better than that.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley.
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June 26, 2009 -
Boomer Times - Mom was rightToday is my mother's birthday, and boy, have I got a surprise for her.
It did not from a store or an online catalog. It can't be wrapped or even held in your hand.
My gift is a personal message that she's been waiting for since my first day of kindergarten in 1962 when she insisted I wear a pretty plaid dress with a white Peter Pan collar even though I wanted to wear an ensemble of striped pajamas, red rain boots and my straw Easter bonnet.
On that day, the battle lines of a lifetime were drawn. She would advise one thing and I would do the opposite.
To put it mildly, I was NOT prone to obedience, though to be fair, this is partly because I am a baby boomer.
After all, there were a gazillion of us crammed into schools and playgrounds in the 1960s. Under our own roof, there were five boomer kids born within nine years, and each of us desperately looked for a way to steal a bit of the spotlight.
Being a good little girl didn't get you much attention under those conditions; so on that fateful day of the showdown over the pajamas, the boots and the bonnet, I forged my own path.
From then on, I made my mom and dad really work to earn their parenting stripes.
But today is Mom's payback. Today, her phone will ring, she will pick it up and she will hear my voice at the other end proclaiming: "Happy Birthday, Mom! You were right!''
At first, She'll pretend she has no idea what I'm talking about.
"I was right about what, dear?'' she'll say in a fake gesture.
But she'll know darn well that I'm talking about the red boots, the Easter bonnet and about much, much more.
For example, when I hit high school, Mom was right about my Catholic school uniform. Hitching up the skirt, practically around my neck, was a bad idea. It was a very bad idea.
As Mom predicted, this put me squarely at the top of the nun's hit list.
Every week, Sister Agnes pulled me out of line in the hall and made me kneel down to prove my hem was long enough to touch the floor.
On top of that humiliation, I had to come home and explain to my father why I was disrespecting the school clothes he had "worked his fingers to the bone to pay for.''
His fingers didn't look all that worked to the bone to me, but mom was also right when she said I should keep that observation to myself.
Mom was right about studying. It turned out better when I actually did the work. Not only did I get good grades because I could identify an isosceles triangle, it also saved on bribe money I had been paying my sister to do my assignments.
Mom was right about her super powers. Her specialty was figuring out exactly when one of her four daughters was sneaking out with a boy. She also had ex-ray vision that could find our forbidden makeup.
I swear she could see through the wood of my dresser drawers, through the balled up gym socks and straight through to the sky blue eye shadow stuffed in the back.
Mom was right about college. I didn't appreciate it until years after it was over.
Mom was right about marriage. If it has enough doses of good times to balance out the bad times, it will work out OK.
And Mom was right about my own kids. As she predicted, and I'm sure she hoped, they gave me the same kinds of challenges I gave her.
Yes. Mom was right about everything.
I suppose this is the reward of motherhood. Your kids eventually come back with their tails between their legs and tell you it turns out that you knew what you were talking about.
So here I am Mom, tail and all, to say it for the world to hear: You were right back then. You're right now, and I hope you'll be right about plenty more things in the future. It's not the most glamorous birthday gift. But it's the one you deserve the most.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley. She teaches at Vassar and Marist Colleges, and at SUNY New Paltz.
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May 22, 2009 -
Boomer Times - It's a dog's life for the unemployedThe big thrill in my life this week was emptying sugar from the sugar bowl, scrubbing the bowl until it gleamed and then putting all the sugar back.
Last week, the big thrill was a Mayberry RFD marathon on TV.
And the week before that, it was the news that I had been turned down for a speaking role in a children's play about animals. Instead, I was offered the part of a background dog. A silent background dog. The director did not let me down gently.
"You're no Meryl Streep,'' she sniffed.
"But you're my sister!'' I howled. "You can't give me a lousy bark?''
"Wag your tail,'' she conceded. "That's as far as I'll go.''
What has happened to my life?
How'd my formerly busy, bustling days change so much that now I'm cleaning stuff nobody should ever clean and I'm going into rehearsal for the role of a nonbarking background dog.
In a nutshell, here's what went down.
Exactly 30 years ago, I walked out of a college classroom, into a newsroom and that's where I thought I'd be until retirement came knocking. But the Internet, and the economy, wreaked havoc on the news business, especially at newspapers, and among the casualties were lifelong journalists like me who parachuted out.
The landing on my insecure middle-aged keyster has been a bit bumpy, at least from an emotional standpoint.
I've done some teaching and distracted myself with our delicious new grandbaby. But when I try to conjure up a vision of a new dream job, all I come up with is a big, blank canvas.
I've also been on the lookout for a therapist who can fix a middle age crisis on steroids.
There has been a bright side, however. The job loss experience has been filled with unexpected life lessons.
I've learned that the right accessories can put a positive spin on any bad situation.
For example, on my last day or work, I nixed the pathetic cardboard box routine and carried out my stuff in a bright bag that matched my red power sweater. My career was going south, but my outfit said I was going places.
I've learned that no matter how bad your life is, it's always worse in Pine Valley. This is the town on the soap opera All My Children and I must admit I've been visiting Pine Valley almost as often as I've been visiting Mayberry.
In Pine Valley, the loss of a job is not important because nobody really has a job. They're all too busy dealing with evil twin sisters coming back from the dead, cheating husbands and rare and incurable diseases.
I've also learned that after a job loss, you should hang up on anybody who calls say: Now you can live out all your dreams! These people have got to be kidding.
If I were living my real dreams, Donald Trump would be picking up my tab and George Clooney would want to be my Facebook friend. Perhaps most importantly, I've learned that being a dog in a play is truly nothing to be ashamed of.
But next time, I'm insisting on a barking role.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley. She teaches at Vassar and Marist Colleges, and at SUNY New Paltz.
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April 27, 2009 -
Boomer TimesThere is a reason that human beings have heads - they keep thoughts inside our brains so nobody else knows what we're thinking as we move about the planet.
As a matter of fact, I used to love to try and guess what people were thinking as they walked by.
"That cranky-looking guy,'' I'd say. "He hates his boss AND his wife and is plotting to run off to Rio de Janeiro ASAP.'' "And that woman over there? She's thinking about going home and eating a pint of ice cream after the day she's having.'' But then the cell phone was invented. Goodbye guessing game. Hello compulsory eavesdropping.
The cell allows people to be in touch with anybody they want, any time they want, and almost any place they want. Everybody else gets to listen in, whether we like it or not, as people share their private thoughts and lives with whoever else is at the other end of the cell phone.
There's probably not a single secret left on earth because we're all talking about our business every second of the day in front of everybody else.
Example No. 1. There were two young women in the restroom with me in a public building recently. These two were total strangers to me otherwise, but I can tell you that one of them is NOT in a good relationship right now, that her mother is giving her a hard time about finishing college and that she thinks her former best friend is a, well, let's just say the name she called her rhymes with itch. The other young woman was worried about paying her rent. She's got a massive sinus infection. And she bought the most adorable and expensive boots in a shoe shop yesterday.
The boots, I couldn't help thinking while I waited in line, may explain why she can't pay her rent.
They walked out the door yakking away as if they both had invisible bubbles around their heads that would keep their conversations private.
Except there were no bubbles and there was no way for me to escape hearing what they had to say.
Example No 2. I don't know what the guy sitting next to me in a hospital waiting room did to make his wife so angry. All I know is he was on his cell, apologizing to her over and over before he glanced up and realized I was listening and smirking at the same time. He gave me a dirty look and stepped into the hallway to finish the call. I could still hear every single word. Hey, I wasn't trying to listen in. But we were only five feet away from each other at the most.
What CAN you do when somebody on a cell near you? Not react at all? Keep a straight face? Stare straight ahead? Pretend you didn't hear?
I don't know about you, but that is way beyond my acting ability.
Ah, how I long for the old days when public spaces were quiet spaces.
When people in restrooms, waiting rooms, elevators and even sidewalks kept all their thoughts inside their heads.
But it's wishful thinking to imagine we'll go back. After all, who in this day and age wants to give up their cell? Certainly not me.
I may begin wearing earplugs, however, whenever I'm out in public. It won't be the safest way to get from one side of the street to another.
But it may be the only way to get there in peace.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley. She teaches at Vassar and Marist Colleges, and at SUNY New Paltz.
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March 27, 2009 -
A "grandma'' by any other name…A rosy-cheeked bundle of joy named Samantha Rose just gave me a first-class ticket into the special world of grandparents. And now that I'm inside the club, there have been a few surprises, not the least of which is a discovery about my fellow baby boomers.
We don't seem all that comfy with the G-words, as in Grandma, or Grandpa.
As soon as I began telling fellow boomers that I was going to be a grandmother, the interrogations began. What do you want to be called? they demanded to know.
"Isn't the kid supposed to call me grandma?'' I innocently said.
By the horrified looks you would think I had suggested the truly unthinkable, like we baby boomers all stop coloring our roots and pretending that we know what "Twitter'' is.
I tried saving face with a few other suggestions: "How about Gram, Nana or Granny?''
This made matters worse. Especially that last one: "Granny.''
"Do you want people to think you're an old lady?'' the boomers said and sounded off all the other clever nicknames they had come up with for their grandkids to call them, like Auntie Maw Maw, Mama Jo-Jo and Papa Bill.
Apparently, it was great being a grandparent. But, according to many boomers, it was no longer cool to use those traditional titles.
The problem was that the more I tried to come up with a replacement, the more ridiculous it got and more it seemed obvious that I was trying to deny the undeniable.
My daughter was old enough to have her own family and that meant I was old enough to be a grandmother and I should be proud of that.
I made my peace and every other boomer who challenges me gets treated to my "grandma" speech.
''Being called 'grandma' is wonderful,'' I harrumph. "It means status. Respect. A promotion!''
By then I'm on a roll.
"It means sharing the wisdom of your years with somebody who's willing to listen.''
"It's a badge of honor, not a badge of shame!''
Usually by the time I get to the ''badge of honor'' part of the speech, people write me off as batty and walk away.
Now, does all this mean I'm totally without vanity? That I've escaped the youth obsession of my baby boomer generation.
Not really. My hairdresser and the gym people will confirm this. So will the young woman at the phone store who patiently showed me how to send text messages on my new phone. Not because I need to. But because it's - to use a boomer term - "groovy.'' And yes, I was a little stunned when my daughter announced her pregnancy. But I also realized I'm a good five years older than either my mom or my grandmother were when they got to this stage in their lives.
Neither of them made seemed to make a fuss about what they were going to be called. One was called Nannie and the other Grandma. So, since they set good examples about everything else, I've decided to follow their lead once again.
When lovely little Samantha Rose begins to talk, I'll be ready to be her "Gram.''
And the day she can send pick up a gadget and send a text message, you can bet this "Gram'' will be ready for that, too.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley. She teaches at Vassar and Marist Colleges, and at SUNY New Paltz.
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February 27, 2009 -
It's every man - and squirrel - for himselfThe warrior who stomps through my back screen door doesn't look like he's in the middle of battle, not with a NY Mets' baseball cap on his head and some old Nikes on his feet.
But he sure sounds like it.
"I will not be defeated!'' he roars over the voice of Oprah coming from the TV set on the kitchen counter.
In his hands, he carries evidence of his latest skirmish behind enemy lines The remains of two large plastic garbage bags, chewed to bits at one end by a bushy-tailed backyard terrorist who brazenly stands atop our birdfeeder day after day, removes the cover, beats his hairy little chest and devours all the birdseed.
That means the score in this pitiful fight of man against tiny beast is this:
Squirrel: 1, Man, Zip
Ah, this is what we empty nesters of the Northeast do in the winter months. When the cold and ice won't let up. When the kids and grandkids live far away. When the calendar says it's going to be many weeks before we can attack the garden, hit the golf course or just enjoy the warm sun.
We go to work, come home, and in between, amuse ourselves by taking ballroom dancing lessons, or by pretending to be hip by setting up our Face book pages, or by feeding birds and fighting with critters who stand in our way.
I could have told my warrior that a squirrel would be able to figure out a way through the plastic bags he had put over the wooden bird feeder. But the warrior had convinced himself that a double layer of bags tied around the feeder and its pole would make it hard to get to.
Also, we already had plastic bags in the house. And the warrior wasn't interested in any ideas that might require more weaponry and cost actual money.
To give him credit, the anti-squirrel bag device worked for a few days. Then we spotted a little hole in the top of the bags.
The next day, it was a bigger hole and our enemy was shimmying around inside, up and down the wooden pole. He was having a grand old' time and the bags that were supposed to keep the squirrel out became his wind block once he was inside.
It was like a squirrel tanning booth in there, what with the sun beating down on the plastic and all.
When he poked his head outside the hole, he looked relaxed, bronzed and triumphant.
Now the warrior's getting really serious. He's even taken his wallet out of the vault, has increased his military budget and is going to the hardware store to buy a contraption that will feed the birds and repel the squirrel at the same time.
This battle's in high gear. Who knows what could happen by spring? We could be living in the yard, eating birdseed and the squirrel could be lord of the manor.
So say whatever you want about squirrels. Sure, they're rodents. And they're annoying and destroy birdfeeders.
But with a swish of their tails, they can turn a reasonable man into a war lord who stomps around yelling about not going down without a fight.
And that's a heck of a lot more fun to watch all winter than anything on Oprah.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley. She teaches at Vassar and Marist Colleges, and at SUNY New Paltz.
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January 23, 2009 -
Modern snow globes: Just what Martians have been waiting forAt this very moment, two Martians are sitting on Mars, doing what Martians have always done.
They are spying on mankind, waiting for just the right moment to take control of our planet. And they are having this conversation.
Martian Bob: Hey, look at what the dopes on earth are doing now!
Martian Bill: Oh please, no more Paris Hilton!
Martian Bob: It's even better. They're so lazy they've got snow globes that snow by themselves. No more shaking required!'' Martian Bill: "And we thought disco was their low point! I think our time has come. Charge up the saucers. Load the laser blasters. Operation Conquer Earth is finally a go!''
My fellow earthlings, this little skit may be demented, but its message is not. The human race could fail because of an automation mania that's turned us into breathing stacks of moronic mush.
And the modern snow globe is Exhibit A.
Sure, snow globes still look the same. They're globes filled with gimmicky scenery and fake snow. But at one time, it took the firm up and down shake of a human being's hands to unleash the magic.
Now, snow globes have fans or devices that make the snow swirl around and around. You barely have to touch a little button or wave a hand at a sensor to get it going.
I recently saw one of these atrocities in a gift store.
"How lame,'' I sniffed, to which store clerk replied, "Lame! It's our biggest seller! Can't keep them on the shelves!'' I tried to grasp the enormity of what she was saying: Mankind is too lazy to operate a snow globe?
The realization was especially hard for a baby boomer like me. In my childhood, we had no video games, an Internet or anything electronic to play with except those pathetic football games that shocked tiny players into jumping all over a metal field.
We had board games and toy cars and toy dolls that were boring compared to today's gadgets. But high on a shelf at Grandma or Aunt Millie's, there often sat a glass snow globe. Children were only allowed to touch them under supervision.
"Break that thing and you could bleed to death,'' Grandma would say. "Go play Yahtzee. Again''
Besides the broken glass threat, there was always the fear that while you were on the floor bleeding to death, a baby would crawl over your body and ingest the poisonous fake snow that had come out of the broken globe.
There's never been a documented case of multiple deaths in one family from a cracked snow globe. But I grew up believing that the No. 2 hazard across America in the 1960s was the snow globe.
Second only to poking one's eye out with a stick.
When you actually got to play with the snow globe, it was pure magic. The blizzard began every time you powered it up, and the power was right in your own little hands.
Today's children wouldn't even want to play with one. They have toys we couldn't even imagine back then, and machines that do everything for them.
Now, I'm not saying we should give up on all automation. I am particularly fond of the dishwasher and the thing-a-ma-jig that opens my garage door.
But automated snow globes? That's crossing the line from clever to pathetic.
So, when you see Martian Bob and Martian Bill hovering over you sometime soon, don't say you weren't warned.
And you can blame the Martian invasion on the brilliant earthling who decided that snow globes should snow by themselves.
Copyright 2009 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley. She teaches at Vassar and Marist Colleges, and at SUNY New Paltz.
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December 26, 2008 -
Boomer Times: Pink Eye, The SequelWhen you've done a pretty good job of bringing up children - meaning their snap shots are not on the post office wall - there are two things you shouldn't have to face ever again.
One is the Annual Simultaneous Family Stomach Bug. The other is Pink Eye.
This is a sticky ailment that invades eyeballs in the middle of the night and leaves them crusty, itchy and oozing.
I know all about it because we did many battles with Pink Eye when our kids were small. We swabbed their little eyes with cotton balls. And we called in neighbors to help hold down a 3-year-old who was stronger than Rambo when it was time for eye drops.
Whew, we'd thought after the kids grew up. Thank God. The days of icky childhood ailments are behind us.
Not so fast. Pink Eye, the Sequel, has begun. I woke up one day last week with one of the worst cases I'd ever seen. Or, actually, not seen, because my eyelids were crusted shut like they'd been coated with quick-drying cement.
This was not the romantic empty nest I'd dreamt about.
"Get the cotton balls,'' I croaked to my husband.
"That sounds a little kinky,'' he said. "But OK!''
"No'' I croaked again. "I've got Pink Eye!''
I lay in the bed, listening to him stumble around the bathroom and I wondered: How did this happen? What's next? Ear infections for the 50-and-over crowd?
I also thought back to our first case of Pink Eye as a couple.
We were on a highway, half way between northern New England and Long Island, on the annual holiday trek to see the relatives. Our youngest had fallen asleep in his car seat in Vermont, all healthy and bright-eyed.
But by the time we got to Massachusetts, he had a raging case of Pink Eye.
We sprang into action.
By some miracle, we had managed to pack cotton balls. We'd forgotten the holiday gifts for one entire side of the family. But we were swimming in cotton balls.
We cleaned him up and I spent the rest of the trip in the useless activity of trying to keep a 5-month-old from rubbing his eyes and spreading gook from one side to the other.
This apology is late, but I want to say we're sorry to the other travelers on that particular day on that particular highway during December 1984. Our baby howled and his 3-year-old sister yelled, "He's gooey!'' for 76 miles straight.
When we finally got to Long Island, the relatives took one look and said we were welcome to stay - but we had to sleep in the stable.
Ah, such fond holiday memories. We just wish they hadn't come back to life. My husband eventually found the cotton balls the night that Pink Eye returned, and tried to hand them to me from the end of a stick.
You'd think I had the bubonic plague. Which I kind of did. But just in my eyeballs.
Seriously, he did a fine job of nursing me, which you can chalk up to all our previous experience. He did, however, keep muttering "Ew, gross,'' under his breath the entire time.
And so, now we know. An empty nest means many things to a couple of middle-age baby boomers like us.
But it does not mean we are icky-free.
Copyright 2008 by Kathleen Norton
Kathleen Norton is a writer in the Hudson Valley. She teaches at Vassar and Marist Colleges, and at SUNY New Paltz.
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