Debra Galant Explains the Universe

The shadow of fear

What do you do when you find out that an 11-year-old girl abducted a few days ago has been found dead …. and when you find out, your own 11-year-old is snuggling in bed next to you? Do you spare your 11-year-old the disturbing news that evil preys on children his own age? Or do you play the video of the girl’s abduction and use it as an object lesson in not talking to strangers?

I kind of played the Carlie Brucia story both ways. I actually watched the video clip of Carlie’s abduction – even more heart-rending the way it turned out – but didn’t call it to the attention of my son. Then my 15-year-old walked in, saw the laptop and the headline, and said matter-of-factly, “Oh, she’s dead.”

My 11-year-old pretended not to have heard anything.

“You know,” I said. “All those times I worry about you…”

Silence.

“And you say, ‘Mom, don’t you trust me?’”

From under the covers. “Yeah.”

“And I say, “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s other people. Bad people.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you see why.”

Silence.

Lesson over.

When something like this happens, you hear about parents putting a tight rein on their kids – sometimes not even allowing them to go into their own backyards alone. But in our town, kids walk to school on their own, ride bikes on their own, visit friends on their own, play in the street on their own. And all this seems right. Even so, when my 11-year-old was late coming home from school twice this week, I felt like my heart had been kidnapped. Then he wandered in, oblivious to the drama that had been playing in my head, and plunked down his backpack. After which I could breathe again.

Should I go with the statistical odds and allow my kids their freedom? Or should I pull in the reins? Drive them everywhere? Arm them with cell phones and beepers every time they step outside?

I’m sure mothers everywhere are debating this very subject right now.

My mother never learned how to swim. When she was growing up, public swimming pools were places where you could get polio. Or so she told me.

On the other hand, my father, who grew up not too far away, did learn how to swim. In a lake. The sink-or-swim method, no less.

My grandparents’ caution may have prevented my mother from being paralyzed. And yet it led to paralysis of a different sort: a lifetime fear of boats and water.

Who knows what shadow we cast across our kids in the name of protecting them.

Did Carlie Brucia's parents fail to innoculate her against evil by insufficiently frightening her on the subject of strangers? Or was she simply the victim of evil, and really, really bad luck?

All vegetables considered

© 2004 Debra Galant

I suffer from TDD, television deficit disorder, a condition that leaves me perpetually clueless when it comes to the latest on Madonna or Britney. I depend almost completely on the kindness of NPR to keep me well-informed about the world, which is why I almost missed today’s big story: Jacko showing up to court 20 minutes late, dancing on his SUV and throwing a party for his fans.

I know this only because I happened to be walking through Macy’s at the hour of Jackson’s court appearance, and there happened to be a flat-screen TV embedded in the wall outside the ladies room. I wasn’t really paying attention, but even when you are looking at clothes you don’t need, marked down 75%, you can pick up a certain urgency in an anchor’s voice and the buzz of a televised crowd. Not to mention…a TV, in the petites department? What the hell was going on? Oh yes, I said to myself. Michael Jackson’s trial. I’ve heard something about that.

Later, on carpool duty, my radio tuned to NPR, I thought I’d hear more on the Jackson story. But, nope. Just to make sure I hadn’t missed it, I came home, looked up NPR on the web, and listened to their 7 o’clock top-of-the-hour newscast.

That’s when I realized that my husband was right. NPR truly does serve up a different kind of newscast than the mainstream media. News that’s good for you could be their motto. The brown rice and broccoli of the media.

Here was NPR’s top-of-the-hour line-up at 7 pm eastern time:

1. Bush appoints Charles Pickering as a federal judge while Congress is in recess (broccoli)
2. The Supreme Court refuses to block a GOP redistricting plan in Texas (spinach)
3. Two defendants in Virginia plead guilty in a terrorist plot (eggplant with garlic)
4. Stock prices up somewhat (pickle)
5. Business inventories rose in November (stale rice in the back of the refrigerator)
6. Justice department won’t fight court order allowing John Hinckley to visit his parents (ratatouille)

It did turn out that NPR ran a story about Jacko after all – but not in the day’s news summary, not with their own reporter (they interviewed a correspondent from People magazine) and, unlike just about every news outlet, they didn’t feature it on the front of their web page.

Don't get me wrong. I love NPR. But for dessert, I did have to turn on CNN. I only watched for a minute. Just a little taste was all I needed. After all, it’s January. I ate too many sweets over the holidays.

That's so gay

© Debra Galant 2004

Gay people scored a victory in New Jersey this past week, when the state passed a Domestic Partnership Act. Now, gay couples will get the kinds of privileges that those of us wedded to the prosaic institution of marriage take for granted – like having your shrink visits covered by your spouse’s health insurance.

But that doesn’t change the fact that on playgrounds across the state, the worst insult imaginable is to say, “That’s so gay.” It’s an insult that has stood the test of time, going back to the Sputnik era, when I was a kid, when bullies puffed themselves up by accusing weak, powerless specimens of childhood of being “homos.”

When kids say, “That’s so gay” they’re usually not referring to matters of sexuality. Kids, as it happens, are equal-opportunity offenders. They will just as easily offend the disabled with “That’s so lame,” the intellectually challenged with “That’s so retarded” or the denizens of the inner city with “That’s so ghetto.”

But as it happens, bullies have to watch who they insult. Because the guy they picked on in third grade might just grow up to be one of the Fab Five from “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” – and get to go through their closets and insult their sportswear on national television.

When “Queer Eye” came onto the scene – what, five months ago? – I thought it was going to be another one of those stupid reality shows, like “Joe Millionaire.” It sounded like a flash in the pan, a punch line to a joke on “The Simpsons.” And yet here we are all these weeks later and you can’t get away from it. It comes up in synagogue. Teenage girls think it’s the cooler than Justin Timberlake. Staid, middle-aged white women practically snort wine out their noses recounting their favorite episodes.

Before you know it, “That’s so gay” won’t work as a playground insult at all.

This is not the first time a group of outsiders have come out of nowhere to define the popular culture. In Neal Gabler’s book, “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood,” he describes how the whole Hollywood studio system was created by Jewish immigrants fresh from the shtetl. The Jews not only invented Hollywood, they invented the whole idea of America that Hollywood peddled in the 30’s and 40’s, right down to Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.”

So if the Jews can invent White Christmas and queers can tell straight guys how to dress, what’s next? Suburban white boys wearing baggy pants and gold chains in order to look ghetto? Oh yeah. Eminem.

Here’s my dream.

If Jews and gays and boyz in the hood can turn the power structure of the American playground upside down, then maybe everything is up for grabs.

Maybe fat people will get to run the fashion magazines - or even model for them. Maybe 18-25 years olds will stop being the most powerful demographic in the marketplace. Maybe menopausal women will be considered hot – and not just by themselves.

Maybe the word gay can even go back to the original meaning of "being keenly alive and exuberant: having or inducing high spirits."

It's America. Stranger things have happened.