I have recently become convinced that despite what may be implied by shows like Desperate Housewives and Weeds, getting acclimated to life in the suburbs has very little to do with what a person looks or sounds like, and virtually nothing to do with what one’s husband does for a living. I could be wrong, by my most recent hypothesis suggests that the most important thing a person can do for social status and fraternity among the natives is succumb to the growing trend of public-scrapbooking in the form of auto “decals.” Auto-decals, the more sophisticated younger brother to the bumper sticker, either magnetic or static in nature, can be affixed, removed, and reaffixed (if necessary) to keep up with suburban family growth and change. For those, like me, who’s five year old’s baby book sits mostly empty in its original box at the top of the closet, I thought it might be helpful to outline a series of very simple steps to get started on the journey to suburban popularity. Continue reading “Rockin’ The Suburbs”
Tag: YMCA
I’ve never been one to say no to a free dinner. Or lunch. Or breakfast. Or coffee, for that matter.
What can I say? I like to eat, yes, but I like even more to have someone else feed me. When I imagine a monthly budget more flexible in the “entertainment” division, I do not imagine seeing more movies in a theater, concerts (like John does), or amusement parks. I just want to go out to eat. I would go out to dinner once a week if it was in our budget, just to have a break from my kitchen.
Apparently the word on this has been out, for some time. I’m finding more and more friends luring me in to some volunteer position by beginning the conversation with, “There will be free food.” It’s like they know I’ll say yes without even listening to the rest. Because that is exactly what I do.
In college I actually pretended to be interested in attending Truett Seminary (twice!) because of their annual Spring visitor’s luncheon. (Got two t-shirts too.) I also signed up to be “adopted” by a family and continued to grace them with my presence periodically from my freshman through senior years because Audrey cooked dinner and I could come do my laundry in her garage. It was wonderful. I attended a ropes course training two weekends in a row, and then volunteered my services for the rest of the year at a camp for kids with disabilities because it meant getting out of the dorms from Friday night through Sunday and eating good old fashioned camp food. (I believe some t-shirts were thrown in to this package as well.) I might as well say it. This little free food fetish is highly likely the number one reason I am currently a Baptist.
Our first church as a married couple? The only one we even visited in Greensboro? We got a card in our mailbox that said, “Join us at 10:15 Sunday for our Curbside Cafe of coffee, donuts, and other snacks.” Done.
This leads me to my current predicament.
The YMCA’s Annual Giving Campaign.
About a month ago, a girl friend called (while I was cooking dinner, she’s that smart) and all I can remember from the conversation goes something like this: “…YMCA…there will be a dinner thing…you’d be on a team with me and Carolina…do you want to do it?” Okay, so realistically, I heard dinner, and the fact that two of my friends would be there, and said yes.
Four weeks, two free dinners, a lunch, $50 and a t-shirt later, I have a stack of green and yellow papers (thick cardstock, to be exact), of people I am supposed to connect with, preferably face-to-face, tell my “Y Story” to, and then ask for money.
First problem: My Y Story.
Here is my Y Story: if you give money, it will support people who are on financial aid scholarships to be members at the Y. People. Uh, me. In fact, every $30 dollars I collect, is another month my familycan currently afford the Y, which I will continue to patronize, at least two (but upwards of five days a week in the summer) to sit on a stationary bike or a couch in the lobby, read a book, drink some coffee, and give my children a social outlet that does not include me trying to do crafts with them at the kitchen table.
How does that sound?
Alas.
Second problem: Ask for Money.
Unfortunately, the majority of the people I hang out with on a semi-regular basis, are also sacrificing in the comforts department in order to stay home with young children, while their husbands are at the beginning of their careers (or still in school), looking at a lifetime of student loans, and wondering how in the heck the current rate for a non-degree’d babysitter can possibly be $10 an hour.
“Our” goal is about $200,000 this year. Truly, this money is all used to support community members who would otherwise not be able to afford membership, a season of soccer for their kids, a week at summer camp, swimming lessons, or a support group for those with cancer. Amazingly, none of it will build a new building, extend a parking lot, or construct a new sauna in the locker room. It all goes into financial aid. This is, actually, something I can rally behind.
Mid bite of my free catered pork slider, I did some number crunching. $200K, divided by the number of YMCA families (not individual members) means that if each family gave just $33 this year, we’d have our goal. That actually seems doable.
John and I gave. Even in the last few months of our financial assistance, we agreed that we could afford a gift.
So now I just have to figure out how to pass this little nugget along to that stack of card stock still sitting in my desk, calling me to get on the ball.
When I was teaching, I used to give a true/false quiz in the very first minute of class, all about myself. Besides the sadistic thrill of telling my honors classes it would “definitely count” (and never smiling) it was an easy way to get new classes seated and quiet, and then force them learn all about the most important thing in the room. I don’t actually remember what a typical score on this 10 question quiz looked like, most teenagers are exactly as dumb as they look when it comes to thinking practically or making inferences on an adult level. But I do remember one question that nearly always threw them:
True | False: Mrs. Wait enjoys staying up late at night reading books.
Of course they all assume that because I teach English I must love to read. (Fact.) And many of them who knew me or knew of me had heard for a long time that I did not own a TV. (Fact, for my first 2 years of teaching.) So naturally, most assumed that this meant I was up till the wee hours indulging my brain in the classics. (Opinion.)
The truth is, I’ve never been one who could read in bed (or really even on a couch for that matter, no matter what time of day it is, unless it is the couch in Starbucks, et. al.) and I’ve also never been one to sit down and read an entire book in one sitting.* I do like reading. And if I had my way, I would read a lot more, but as it is, perfect conditions have not presented themselves with regularity since I was in college. When I was teaching, Fridays were mandatory 45-minutes-of-silent-reading-in-my-classroom days, which allowed to me read about 7 books a semester (imagine, silent reading three times a day!), and when I commuted 30 minutes one way to work, I read several audiobooks in the car.
So despite my current lack of cable TV and the fact that I can basically be home, all day, if I want, the only time I really read anymore is at the gym. Yes, truthfully, I enjoy the couches in the lobby (and have been since my Gold’s Gym coffee and reading time LAST summer) but if I’m feeling adventurous, I’ll actually pedal a stationary bike and drink water with my book. For my $30 a month membership, what do I care whether I actually get a “work out” or not? This is $1 a day babysitting people. And there’s coffee.
I’m currently in the middle of Tina Fey’s book Bossypants.
Yeah, okay, it’s mostly funny.
I might have actually snorted and shot water out of my nose and onto the heart rate monitors yesterday.
So naturally, the kindhearted and friendly folks at the Jerry Long YMCA are curious. What could she possibly be reading that has her so giggly? On a stationary bike no less!?
Every single time someone asks me, “What are you reading,” and I explain that it’s Tina Fey’s book and “Yes, it’s pretty funny, if you think Tina Fey is funny,” I feel like I’m doing anyone over the age of 50 (which most of them have been, so far) a disservice by my failure to include the disclaimer: “But I might actually suffer from the maturity of a 13 year old.”
Today, on a small couch in the lobby, one social-security recipient asked, “Who do you think would enjoy that book more, me or my wife?”
Well that depends, sir. How much does your wife enjoy fart jokes?
I’m not about to explain that as I read Tina Fey’s book I feel like I completely understand her because SHE IS ME. Or I’m her, or whatever. But as I’ve said in the past, when I identify myself with a famous female sense of humor, Tina Fey immediately comes to mind. If I wrote a book, I’d probably do a little less name-dropping and butt kissing (I gather that her self-deprecating humor comes from a true sense of insecurity and not a feigned one), but I’m not sure that I’d do any less bathroom humor.
I do think what a person finds truly humorous does say a lot about that person and I’ve only found myself embarrassed of my sense of humor in front of a handful of people (Christian school administration comes to mind). But today at the gym, I simply couldn’t go on reading and giggling and promoting this book, knowing that this kind, conservative man, who was probably somebody’s grandfather might one day be privy to exactly what I was laughing at, and shudder.
Sorry people. It doesn’t matter how old you are. Farts are funny.
* With the exception of one book, Ender’s Game, which is exactly how I recommend it as my favorite book: it is the only book I’ve ever read in one sitting, as well as the first book I ever re-read, and the one book I’ve read the most times.
Just read: This Life is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone by Melissa Coleman.
It is the true story written by the oldest daughter of Eliot Coleman, a man who took his wife and child to the tip of Maine in the 70s and decided to “go back to the land” by homesteading.
What resulted, ultimately, were several books and articles (many about organic farming which have since become quite beneficial to the current national trend) and one very broken family.
At our book club discussion of the memoir last night, to one question came this answer: “Just because it can be written does not mean it should. Sure, everybody’s got a story to tell. That doesn’t mean they all need to be published.”
I’m wondering if I should heed such wisdom and stop now.
Overheard this week at the gym (a younger-than-me-female trainer to a senior citizen on a recumbent bike):
Trainer: Oh wow! So you’re 89! You’re like, almost 90! Aren’t you excited by that?
89 Year Old: No.
Trainer: Oh man! I would be like so excited if I was almost 90. I mean, when I’m almost 90, that’s like, so awesome that you’ve lived for so long. It should be exciting. I would be excited.
89 Year Old: …
Trainer: Well okay! You’re doin’ great! Good to see ya. See you around.
Hard to read the facial expression from my position directly next to the man, but I think I was feeling a strong sense of WTF coming from the awesome-almost-90-year-old. I love my gym. I do. And I hate that I’m about to say anything negative at all about the place that gives me a full two and a half hours of actual happy serenity whenever I may need it (as long as it is before 1pm Monday-Saturday). So here’s the thing unsaid: the trainers at this gym (and so many others for that matter) are obnoxiously, overwhelmingly, and disproportionately positive. It pains me to hear one 30-something male trainer use “Right on, right on,” like it is still 1999. Most of the time, I think they only hear themselves, and like shot-guns they walk around spraying people with random blasts of all-encompassing-encouragement, but they never linger long enough to see who/what actually gets hit. Lots of words. Lots of finger points. Very little eye-contact. Strangely reminiscent of the dining halls at Baylor. I get the feeling many of them wake up each day with the goal to “live intentionally.”
Overheard today, the last day of Vacation Bible School (a mother standing in the doorway to two, 7-year old girls sitting on the floor behind her):
Exasperated Mother: EE-mily. Carly-Faith. You have about ten seconds to get off that floor. Nay-ow. Come own.
Things unsaid: 10 whole seconds? Lady. Do you realize how long that actually is? Did you mean to say TWO seconds? Because ten entire seconds is probably a little longer than you are willing to stand there holding the door for some 7-year olds, judging by your tone. Then again, maybe that’s exactly why the girls are on the floor in the first place.
And finally, another parking situation.
Vacation Bible School is at the Baptist church in Winston-Salem that could moonlight as a community college. Eliott and Carter assume we’re at some amusement park because they have courtesy “trains” to pick you up in the parking lot and drive you the half or full mile to the church entrance.
It is huge.
Finding a parking spot for the one and only VBS that takes place from 9-12 anymore, also a bit of a nightmare. Normally I am picky. Normally I choose not to park next to jabronies who have managed to wedge their mini-vans directly on top of or even slightly over the line into an empty spot. Given however, that my car is compact, and my clock was reading 12:03, I knew I had to take the first thing that came available.
I wedged in.
I almost had to crawl through my trunk to get out.
I resisted the urge to write my name in red car door paint all over the green mini-van in question.
As we’re leaving the building, I’m hoping the driver of the van has already picked up her kids. I would be out of such luck. Rather, I would be in such luck as to walk out at the exact same moment as the green-mini-van-owner who is recognizing me from the gym and introducing herself as we walk.
She then pushes a button on her key which opens EVERY DAMN DOOR ON THAT GREEN MINI-VAN (and I think turns on the DVD players inside, but I can’t be sure). Though she is not the same mother who was willing to wait a full 10 seconds for the kids on the floor, she might as well be. Lady’s in no hurry to get anyone inside a car, but her van doors have now halved the space between my car and hers.
Eliott was forced to crawl in from Carter’s side and buckle her own seatbelt.
Things unsaid (in my best, most-chipper, southern church voice): Well! Look at that! Luckily I’m not actually one of those (hushed) overweight Baptists who wouldn’t be able to fit in this 3 inch space to get into my driver’s seat right now. About that play-date…call me!
The UnderToad 