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We’re celebrating independence by demonstrating ours: no guest post today.  In honor of America.

God bless you, your family, and anyone responsible for lighting the fireworks you’ll be watching this weekend.  May your weekend be sunny and ER free.

Things I have done and will never ever do again:

1. eat at Chuckie Cheeses
2. visit Disneyland
3. ride a ferris wheel
4. play chess
5. take a cross-country bus ride
6. dye my hair
7. buy a dog
8. have a baby
9. have a period
10. eat a Twinkie
11. go on a blind date
12. buy an American car
13. read Proust
14. read Nicholas Sparks or Danielle Steele
15. wear shorts
16. hitchhike/or pick up hitchhikers
17. poop in my car
18. get up at 5 a.m. to do anything
19. smoke a cigarette/cigar
20. watch “Somewhere in Time”

­Things I shouldn’t do but probably will anyway:

1.   cut my own hair

2.   eat a Hostess snowball

3.   sew something

4.   let the grandchildren drink Dr Peppers behind their parents’ backs

5.   make grandchildren watch scary movies

6.   pee at the side of the road

7.   curse

8.   skip church

9.   tell a Polish joke

10.  complain/whine/sulk

11.  scratch until it bleeds

12.  wear Tom’s underwear when I run out of my own

13.  look at myself in a magnified mirror

14.  stay up past midnight

15.  forget the sunscreen

16.  leave worn clothes on the floor

17.  mix whites and colors

18.  dance in my undies on the back porch

19.  take a sleeping pill

20.  ask Tom who he will marry when I die

Rebecca

Last night Levi and I drove to New Jersery to buy camping gear. (Because where, other than New Jersey, does one buy camping gear?) We’d been wanting to do it since last summer, and with Independence Day just around the corner and money set aside for this very purpose, we knew the time was ripe.

The obvious objection is that we live in New York City and there is neither space in our apartment to store the gear, nor plot in the City to use it, nor car to get us to the nearest campground—undoubtedly a commercial endeavor where we make reservations, use actual bathrooms, and purchase trinkets at the gift shop on our way out.

Still, we wanted camping gear because we want to be the kind of people who go camping, and akin to those people who think their Northface Jackets make them explorers, we sought validity in just owning the gear. Read the rest of this entry »

Lisa

Sitting around the Sunday dinner table last week, a close family friend (who finds herself solidly in her second trimester) announced the names she and her husband are considering for their son.

“We really like Cougar,” she beamed.
Silence. Awkward silence.
“Is that a family name from Jason’s side?” my dad deadpanned.
“Oh, no,” she said, rubbing her belly, “Since we met at BYU and all…”

Rise and shout, indeed.

On the way home in the car as my dad and I mercilessly mocked (“Maybe his middle name should be Meat. The 40-somethings who’ll be chasing him down his freshman year at college will love that…”), my mother interjected. While she agreed that this name was not something she’d ever choose, she told us that it wasn’t really our business.

Here’s the thing: I think it is. Read the rest of this entry »

Sarah

I once heard that a woman I knew was marrying a man I knew.  I was a little surprised.  I had earlier decided that the man was less . . . desirable than the woman, for reasons too ungenerous to name.  But I was for the marriage if she was for the marriage because, after all, he was a good man, and kind, and who am I to stand in the way of true love?  And, too, because I knew this: that woman would be her husband’s biggest fan.  No matter whom she married, she would be her husband’s biggest fan.  And that seemed like great gift to give to a marriage.

I have since begun to worry that I won’t be my husband’s biggest fan.

I’m pretty critical, in my head and out of my mouth sometimes.  Even to people I love.  I’m ashamed to say, perhaps especially to people I love.

I used to think that maybe it wasn’t necessary to be my husband’s biggest fan.  Or my family’s.  Or my best friend’s.  Maybe my loving them the truest—seeing their faults, loving them for or in spite of their weaknesses (I hadn’t decided yet)—would be enough.  After all, how can we love truly if we don’t see clearly?  And what is true love if not helping other people to become their best selves?

(Though I have to admit: when I’m slogging through it in an actual relationship, I often wish that my partner would cherish me a little more and correct me a little less.  When I’m the one giving out the correction, this is easy to forget.)

Read the rest of this entry »

GUEST BLOGGER: RACHEL OLSON

Rachel is a philosopher, a procrastinator, a roof sitter, and a rising star. At 16, she is the Apron Stage’s youngest guest poster. We invited her to post a companion piece to Rebecca’s; accordingly, Rachel provides one student’s experience with the gritty reality of crime and punishment in the New York public school system.  Read more of Rachel here.

Yes. It’s true. I got it.

I, Rachel Elizabeth, was late to first period six times over the past three quarters (more than that, but Sra. Tuohy is understanding). A single slip handed to my sixth period Euro AP teacher and my fate was sealed.

The injustice rankles. I mean, seriously. Of all the days of all the periods of school when I could have been late since September, I’ve only been late six times! Six! What is this world coming to?

Room 112. 04/03. 3:00-3:30. Come late and you’re not allowed inside. I imagined bars over the windows. Was it okay for me to take out my school work? Twenty minutes of free time sounded nice, but no one else was working. Would the scary teacher in the front with the NY Yankees t-shirt and the cemented sneakers glare at my unsuspecting head top until I looked up and realized even homework was discouraged in this place? Read the rest of this entry »

Louise

Summer has finally arrived in Utah and with it has come a knock-down-flat-on-your-back cold.  First I got it and then Tom got it.

There’s a huge difference between having a cold when you’re over sixty-five and when you are, say, twenty-five, or even fifty-five.  When you are over sixty-five, your paranoia about dying becomes hypersensitive.  You think of stories you’ve heard where people do die in their sixties of silly things like pneumonia or little bacterial infections that become killer bacterial infections.  Like that woman, somebody’s mother, who went to Washington D.C. to help her daughter with a new baby and died of pneumonia suddenly.  No one would believe that story if it were fiction.

The cold began with a sore throat.  Tom and I were watching a British series on Hulu, (DOC MARTIN, which I recommend to all), on my laptop in bed.  In the middle of it I knew I was dying this very week, and I didn’t want to.  I turned away from the laptop and faced the wall.  I tried to be brave.  I thought about how I had gotten everything I ever wanted in my life and to want it to continue another twenty years was sheer piggishness.  I closed my eyes, preparing myself to stop breathing.

“You think you’ve got swine flu and you’re dying,” Tom says.

“Yes,” I say without turning over.

“Get real.  You’ve got a cold.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

On Sunday, after attending two different sacrament meetings to hear our nearest and dearest give Father’s Day talks, Tom falls into bed. “I think I have a fever,” he says.

“No, you don’t,” I say touching his brow.

“I think I do.”

“No.”

He’s not convinced.  I have to go to the grocery store and buy a thermometer.  He takes his temperature three times.  It’s below normal.  “You don’t have a temperature and you don’t have the swine flu,” I say.  “You have my cold.”

“Maybe,” he says.

Like I said, it’s different when you’re over sixty-five.

photo courtesy of The New York Times

Lisa

My favorite high school teacher always taught a unit on opera in his senior Art/Music/Literature course. He loved opera and since most high school kids don’t, he called the unit “Faking It with Opera Lovers.” He gave his students a Cole’s Notes crash course on opera—the composers, the singers, the arias—and, for the final exam, he sent them to an actual performance where he had friends of his (also knowledgeable opera lovers) sit next to these kids and see how well they could hold their own in conversations about opera. The grade they received was based entirely on how well they could fake it. Read the rest of this entry »

Rebecca

School’s out for the summer. At least here New York, it will be in two days. I’ve decided to post some pieces I wrote back when I was a teacher in Washington Heights. Word count: exceptional. As my students might say: my bad. Also, just to be clear, this is not a picture of Noel. Somehow, I don’t have one.

I always feel like I’m failing as a teacher when students use poor grammar to tell me off. Like last week when Kevin stole my keys, broke into my classroom, took my notebook, and wrote “fuk you” in red marker on the black board.  Or, like the first day of school when I asked the students to write their emergency numbers on an index card. Noel Moore wrote “mind you business.”

Noel makes it impossible for me to “mind my business.” The assistant principal shakes her head at me, “It’s a good thing you like that boy. Somebody has to.”

I do like him. He’s the smallest boy in our class, has googling eyes, a mouth that is more frequently open, and braces without any wires.  He looks half his age, but no one makes fun of him because he’s confident and his best friend is Darien Perry—who measured some six feet three inches in the seventh grade and gained notoriety for setting Mr. Garcia’s trash can on fire and then trying to piss out the flames. Read the rest of this entry »