A poignant essay against the selfie stick

Is the Selfie Stick already over? Perhaps when Walmart is selling them, the trend is dying.  Then again, maybe the next wave of annoying tourist is merely upon us.



This beautifully worded essay from New York Times, although slightly dated, is about more than just the ridiculousness of the selfie stick.  It's about how we capture memories, and why we embark upon the adventures that create them in the first place.  Are weirdly angled snaps of us photobombing national monuments the best way to remember what it felt like to be there, or just good fodder for showing off in our created Facebook lives?  Does a blog (like this one) do a better job of capturing the temporary community you make with the people around you, the sights, the smells, the zeitgeist of a place, or are you just "living" out loud for an audience?

  

Bah, Humbach

I can't believe I haven't shared this story with you yet, but there are some vague references to it in upcoming recipes, so study up!  (The unabridged version can be found in my book of essays, Driving a Rental Car in Heels ...and Other Adventures of a Traveling Musician).

Just after I graduated from college, I headed off to southern Germany for three months to participate in
an opera festival.  I never completely understood the circumstances of this festival; the singers were a
mixture of students in supporting roles and up-and-coming "stars" in the lead roles.  The orchestra, which
had been whittled down from full size to chamber, comprised students from my alma mater and a couple
others.  I auditioned on campus for some very serious German people whom I never saw again, and one
month later the letter came in the mail that I would be spending my post-graduation summer in Bavaria.  I
felt just like the ivy-leaguers of yore who did those post graduation European trips, only I'd be working it
off in my first real, paying gig!  How cool was that?  How cool, indeed...

The flight was a blur of pure agony, waiting in lines for what seemed like an eternity, a six hour
plane ride sitting next to a graduate voice student who fancied herself the supreme diva, if not in talent,
then certainly in demeanor, and a very cranky German stewardess who guarded the water and orange
juice as if it was her own personal supply for the entire of the flight.  When we arrived at the airport in
Munich, we were herded through customs in a daze, exuberantly hugged by a very tall gentleman we
would come to call our boss, and herded again into a few vans for a 90 minute drive through the Bavarian
countryside to the charming hamlet of Humbach.  I passed out soon after taking my seat between a
sweaty, morbidly obese tenor and a wiry, foul-mouthed violinist.  I came to, crammed into a kitchen with
many long, narrow tables set up picnic-style. Seriously, I don't remember how I got there.  Did someone
carry me?  I just hoped it wasn't that sweaty guy, who was already starting to give me meaningful glances
from across the room.

We were seated amidst big crusty loaves of bread, plentiful carafes of red wine, and piles of
plump gray sausages while listening to a rousing welcome from our previous airport greeter (and boss),
Marco.  I skipped the sausages and loaded up on carbs and booze (a habit I would repeat daily for the next
three months in Germany, where vegetarians are tolerated but not welcome), tried to focus my vision on a
single object (any would do) and concentrated on what sounded like directions and pertinent information.
I failed miserably at the last two tasks, but the cellist took me by the arm and filled me in while leading
me back (egad!) to the van.  And then it was on to my new summer home, a quaint little bed and breakfast
located along a picturesque pond on the edge of the Black Forrest.

We met our haus frau, whose English was horrid, but she managed to gesture toward things
enough to communicate that she would take our sheets and towels for cleaning and exchanging.  What we
didn't understand at the time was that she was telling us this would only occur once per month.  I looked
out the window to the pond.  Guests (the ones who were actually paying) lay out on the little rickety
docks with picnic baskets nearby, catching some sun in these pre-cancer paranoid days.  They all seemed
pretty old and wrinkly, and the women didn't look particularly enticing in their white two-pieces.  Come
to think of it, why were they all wearing white two-piece suits?. . .  It was their underwear.  These
grandmothers were sunbathing in their skivvies, not a care in the world.  Welcome to Germany.
At dinner we met the leading ladies and men of the two operas we would perform.  They were
definitely older and had the aura of seasoned performers, at least to my 21-year-old sensibilities.  I would
later learn that they were mostly Canadians who couldn't find work in North American companies
because the competition was too stiff, and they had singing problems or acting problems that were
hanging them up, not to mention their drinking problems.

Dinner was, of course, more grilled meats, which in Germany are rarely identifiable slabs cut
from single animals, but rather ground up bits from various animals and body parts reconstituted into
palatable shapes.  There were some mayonnaise-based salads, some over-cooked green beans, and lots of
bread and beer.  I felt like I hadn't left the Midwest, except that I couldn't understand a word anyone was
saying.  It was disconcerting when middle aged men seemed to be laughing and pointing in my general
direction, but otherwise it was really quite freeing.  I was like a child, a dazed child who relies on the
kindness of strangers and trips through the day oblivious to the complexities around her.  It was a bit
magical, especially in my jetlagged state.  The multiple steins of beer didn’t hurt the situation, either.  

Rehearsals, we learned at the end of the night, would commence in the morning (why give
directions to a bunch of drunks?  I mean, really) – so, 8am for the orchestra, 10am for the singers so as
not to strain their voices.  We would break for lunch, which we could make in the theater with the
groceries we kept there once we got to go grocery shopping, rehearse again, separately, in the afternoon,
have dinner in the theater (needed groceries again for that), and then we’d put things together at night.
We would work this way for three weeks, at which time we would then open the theater for 10
performances.  Once we began performing the show, we would have more free time; mornings off to
recover from hangovers, rehearsal in the afternoon, dinner and the show for the first week, then just
shows.  So, slave labor to start would eventually give way to some great opportunities to slip away and
enjoy the area. But first, we had to get through these three weeks.

There were drivers assigned to our various homes who would pick us up at designated times for
rehearsals, performances, and errands.  These drivers were all power-hungry idiots.  Actually, ours was
not power-hungry, just an idiot.  He was the nineteen-year-old boyfriend of my whiniest, most grating
housemate, and therefore had to obey her every whim before taking care of basic responsibilities like, oh I
don't know, taking me to rehearsal.  And because I was the only instrumentalist in my house, stranded
amongst a sea of singers, my schedule was different from everyone else in my area and often caused
much confusion.  The first morning, at 7:45am, I started to panic and began randomly calling drivers'
numbers.  I was still out here!  Was anyone coming to get me???  I shouldn't have worried.  Brett
appeared eventually--at 7:58.  Brett was not good at estimating how much time it took to get from point A
to point B, so we were, despite some very dicey moments on those narrow, winding mountain roads, five
minutes late.  When I arrived, the conductor looked at me sternly and said something severe-sounding in
German.  I had no German skills so I sheepishly apologized in English and explained that my driver was
very late picking me up.  He said, in pinched English, "Ach, don't be such a tattle-tale, vill you?  Ees OK."
Alright, then.


Rehearsal went pretty well. The problem came when we broke for lunch.  Recall that we would
be allowed to use the kitchen when we had food to prepare, but we hadn't been given the opportunity to
get groceries, the nearest full-service store being 30 minutes away.   Now we had exactly one hour before
we had to be back in our seats for the next rehearsal, and there was no food to eat.  Well, actually, the
fridge was loaded with food--some of the more enterprising singers had gone shopping before their 10am
rehearsal while we were slaving away in the pit.  But we all knew we'd be starting some kind of war if we
took their food and promised to replace it later.  So we did what any enterprising musicians would do—
we found a bottle of tequila and a bottle of red wine tucked away in the pantry and we pounded that stuff
like it was liquid gold.  Afternoon rehearsal was a bit like an out-of-body experience, but our stomachs
stopped growling.

**************
Our little adventures were really the highlight of the gig.  Once the show began, we went to Vienna,
where we spent two days locked out of our rental car before we had managed to get out of the expensive
inner ring of the city for the night.  So, two of us checked in to the swankiest hotel I have ever laid eyes
on to this day, and the other four snuck up the stairs when no one was looking, all sharing two
complimentary toothbrushes and towels.  We had the time of our lives.  We saw naked people wandering
around the city park (we found this in Munich, too--interesting that the saggy-breasted in central Europe
are so comfortable with themselves) and had some tasty coffee.  In Venice, a vendor on the piazza gave
me a pair of lovely earrings because I reminded her of her sister, and in Milan we lived the highlife in a
time when the American dollar traded very favorably against the Italian lyre.  In Salzburg we ate our
weight in beautiful, chocolaty Mozartkugel (alright, that was just me) and enjoyed amazing free concerts
at the Mozarteum.  It slowly began to dawn on me that we were living in a rather posh little vacation area
of Bavaria and that we were actually cheap labor and entertainment for rich business people and tourists.
I was foreign labor without a work permit!

The next two months were a haze of rehearsals, performances, trips, and booze, but I do recall
that our last night in Germany was rather exciting.  The local news channel had come to broadcast clips
from the show and do some interviews with the cast in a special feature about the festival.  Of course, the
old drones down in the pit weren't asked any questions--the boob-popping singers' costumes proved far
more enticing--but I'm pretty sure half of my left ear made it on screen.  After the show, there were lavish
bouquets of flowers with cards for each of us along with mini bottles of champagne, which we
unceremoniously slammed as soon as we could figure out how to open them.  We were cheap dates after
not eating for so many hours, and only after we began stumbling around did it become apparent that the
theater had been reorganized to make room for dancing on the floor, with a lot of well-dressed, middle
aged people standing around pumping our boss, Marco's, arm.  For the next several hours (who knows
how long, really?), we young gals were introduced to the wealthy-looking men while the male leads were
cloistered over near their yuppie wives, trying to remain standing upright (there was a lot more wine and
beer available after the champagne) and refusing or accepting offers to dance or sing at the piano.  I'm not
implying that Marco was trying to pimp us out, but these people's names did appear on the programs as
donors.

***************

I don't recall how I got home all that clearly.  I remember drinking a lot of tequila while crammed in to
my friend's guest room across the pond later that night, and I vaguely recall being rather crabby and
dehydrated the next day at the airport. I can say that I learned these things:  Tequila is very cheap in
Germany. . .  Those charming, authentic cuckoo clocks?—they’re not worth shipping home; they're made
in China. . . . .  And don't be such a tattle-tale, vill you?  Ees OK.

Not amused.

Tune in to CPR.ORG to listen to me make a fool of myself!

This is an excerpt from a full essay that will be featured on the show Telling Stories on Colorado Public Radio this weekend.  In the Denver area, tune in to 90.1FM; you can also listen ANYWHERE! at cpr.org--choose the news channel, not the classical channel.  The show airs Sunday, June 26 at 2pm and Monday, June 27 at 9pm, MDT.

Drowning on a Rooftop: My Short-lived Career in Jazz


When I was the new flutist in town, I was lucky enough to befriend a seasoned flutist in the area who had more work than she could handle, and she soon began sending people my way when she was unavailable.  She wasn’t sending me the good stuff, though-- I was fielding calls for outdoor weddings, free library concerts, and small-town museum exhibits.   In the summer, the wedding calls were particularly prolific.  I do not love outdoor weddings, but I was a hungry musician fresh out of graduate school and eager to take any job I could get, so whenever the phone rang, I said yes.

At times that was probably a mistake.  Having just completed a degree at a prestigious music school, I thought I was ready for anything that came my way; I thought I’d played it all.  I was foolishly over-confident.  I could change the tiniest detail in my orchestra solo when the conductor requested it because he was telling me EVERY DETAIL he wanted me to play.  I could change my interpretation of a concerto on a dime in lessons because I had been trained to recreate whatever sounds someone else told me to make.  [Bring in a copy of me playing Devienne w/ UW orch.] I have since learned that success as a student in a coddled environment is not exactly the same as surviving as a gigger, when one must be able to play something completely foreign without any coaching--that is not how we are trained at the university.   I learned my lesson that summer on the rooftop of the most expensive hotel in town; it was at the wedding for the daughter of a local news anchor.

I was substituting for my friend, and it was her regular trio who had been contracted to do this gig.  The pianist and cellist were old friends, and the trio had a set book of tunes they played which comprised classics from the big-band era and Frank Sinatra's songbook: “Chicago”, “De-Lovely”, that sort of thing. [Play jazz clip here--S‘Wonderful.] So, this was a jazz gig.  Let me explain. The world is divided into two kinds of flute players: those who are classically trained, and those who play jazz.  I do not know how to play jazz.  I like jazz--I like to play it on my stereo when friends come over for dinner, and I like how cool I think it makes me look when people see my CDs laying around.  I have been guilty of losing track of myself while cooking to my Totally 80s compilation, only to make a mad dash for the Chet Baker and Herbie Mann CDs at the sound of the doorbell (it also helps to have a couple others laying around casually--I like the experimental stuff that looks impressive but sounds awful--just put it on a side table underneath the stereo remote.)  So I can listen to jazz, but as a performer, I learned music strictly by reading it and following the directions on the page, not by reading a skeletal outline of the tune and filling in the rest on-the-spot.    And I had never played off of jazz charts, which are not only missing a crucial number of notes, but also tend to be scribbled in a way that makes it look like the arranger must have been writing with his toes.  I'm not making excuses--I was inexperienced.  No amount of cleanliness in those scores could have saved me.  I had no idea what I was doing.

As soon as I arrived and discovered that the music on my stand was beyond my training, I looked beseechingly around the room for my colleagues, whom I hoped would be understanding and get me through it. I‘ll be honest, I was in an absolute panic, and having just come from school, I still had fresh memories of  striving to be note-perfect and please everyone for my well-deserved pat on the head.  But when I saw jazz charts on the stand, I knew I would not be getting a gold star for this performance.  As humiliating as the thought was, I was completely prepared to relinquish any sense of shame for whatever sad, patronizing help they could throw my way.  After all, I reasoned to myself, they wouldn’t want to crash and burn in public, even if it was clearly my fault.  The audience wasn’t going to say “well, that flutist is obviously clueless, but the other two have got some jazz chops.”  Most likely, the audience would just say, “they suck.”

Well, that was my rationale, but unfortunately, the cellist and pianist were not on board with my game plan.  The cellist seemed to approach that afternoon’s musical soiree as a kind of duel, like that cheery ditty, “Dueling Banjos”, only one of the banjos (me) just falls on her face.  When I first spotted him, he was already at the bar looking grim as he ordered his first drink (vodka martini), and commenced playing the game he would maintain throughout the gig: don’t look at the flute player.  Don’t speak to the flute player.  Play as if the flute player is not there.  Playing jazz is really a combination of having the tunes memorized (I did not), having been properly trained to improvise in the style (I was not), and LOOKING AT EACH OTHER during performances to more smoothly take turns playing the solos (which I did not want, but if I had to solo, he could at least tell me when to do it).  So this “pretending I was invisible” schtick was just altogether wrong for the occasion.  It was about  like trying to run a relay race while refusing to acknowledge the next runner in line--you’re not supposed to just throw the baton on the ground and go have a Gatorade, you’re supposed to hand over the baton, then you can have your Gatorade.

And speaking of Gatorade, did I mention there was an open bar for the musicians, as well?  It was part of our pay, and initially it was also a pretty big reason why I decided to take the gig.  But here’s the problem: I hadn’t eaten much that day, and the bartender was generous with the alcohol.  My gin and tonic was gin with a splash of tonic.  Don’t ask me why I decided to cash in on that part of my pay before I even saw the music, but I assumed I could do it.  If it had been Pachelbel’s Canon, I totally could have done it.  I really shouldn’t have tried with Cole Porter.  I wasn’t exactly drunk, but the buzz I had going did not help boost the old confidence level as I tried to figure what the heck I was suppose to be doing.   As I surveyed the slightly blurry landscape of discerning audience members on that rooftop, I started to realize just how screwed I probably was.

Meanwhile, the pianist, a caricature of an aging debutante, was hugging and kissing every well-dressed couple over sixty years of age.  She seemed to be more of a small-time society lady than she was a serious musician.  But she was chatty, kind, and had pretty low standards, so that was somewhat comforting.  She was not, however, the mothering type, and she just assumed I’d pick up on things.  She also had a constant refresher going on her cosmo, so that might have been part of the reason she wasn’t always picking up on my not-so-subtle signals.

She was so wrapped up in her friends, and the cellist was so furiously sucking down his drink while diligently avoiding eye contact, that we had no opportunity to talk strategy before we had to start playing.  What tunes would we play?  What was the "high-sign" to stop?  Where was a tuning pitch?  How do you read his music?  I was the only one who didn’t know anything, and they sort of left me in the dust.   So as we began, I kept looking blankly--nay, pleadingly--at the pianist just before starting a tune so she could tell me which one it was.  I would then madly tear through the songbook until I found it, while the cellist glared and sighed at me and the pianist nervously giggled.  No one would have mistaken me for a pro.

I was generally playing the melody and should have been the one to improvise some solos over the more basic piano part, but it was such a struggle.  If it was a tune I recognized, I would just try to copy my Sarah Vaughn or Billie Holiday CDs as well as my memory would allow, and then play a couple of major scales up and down until the other two stopped.  [Insert clip of me fumbling over Theresa’s vamp on Take 5.]  Sometimes I had no clue what the song was and would just stare at the pianist to communicate that I would not be doing a solo, no thank you.  She was kind enough to jump in with her well-worn solos at those times, but only if I caught her eye.  A few times I just dropped out and stared at the music while they went on with their sparse accompaniment parts for several bars before the pianist jumped in.  A couple of years later I heard one of those tunes, I think, at a friend’s house (he was also trying to look cool while serving dinner).  Hearing the melody with the words made me realize just how badly I had butchered that song: I was stopping in all the wrong places because I was so flustered (“you make my…[stare wildly at pianist]…heart…smi-….le”.  At the time, the cellist got so frustrated that he shouted, “Ah, GOD!” during one of my blank moments between what should have been syllables of the same word.  He said it rather loudly.  During the performance...

THERE'S MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM!  Listen to Telling Stories  at cpr.org Sunday, June 26 at 2pm and Monday or June 27 at 9pm, MDT.

The People's Orchestra

Have you bought my book yet, damnit?  Well, here's another little taster, but the book is way better!

I played for a short time in a regional orchestra in my state.  We would meet once a month for four rehearsals and the concert and collect our paychecks.  Really, it was more than that; the people were extremely nice to work with, the conductor was one of the best I have ever had the pleasure of playing under, and the music he programmed was generally superb, if not always precisely played.  It fit into my schedule most of the time and satisfied my occasional desire to play some of the orchestral classics, and I did it for four years.  Since we were the only such group for at least 200 miles in any direction, and since we had the name of the state in our group’s title, we were expected to play for events all around the state.  We were the people's orchestra, in a sense; if your town had a big event happening, one that might be enhanced by orchestral music, you called us.  I liked this notion, that we served our state and that there was a need for classical music in these very modern times.  This afforded me the opportunity to get to know some beautiful places I might otherwise never have visited and also introduced me to some very sweet people...sweet people who were not accustomed to organizing large-scale events.  (You knew a punch line was coming, right?)

The last drive-out I did with the symphony was to a small town just off the interstate, about an hour's drive from our town.  They were celebrating their centennial and wanted us to give a concert in the city park as part of their weekend festivities.  Although the drive was relatively short, we all took the bus.  There was no scenery, no cute historical stop between here and there, and the symphony didn't reimburse you for mileage if you opted out of the free transportation to an event.  In fact, after the disaster with the flat tire my first year, neither Joel, Meredith, nor I ever drove ourselves again.  Plus, it was 102 degrees outside (I know it's a dry heat, but that's still a lot of heat), and my nine-year-old car wasn't too powerful in the air conditioning department anymore.  Remember that temperature, by the way, because it's a key element to this story.

We headed first to the local high school to rehearse. The building was not air conditioned, but there were a couple of doors in the back that had been propped open for some ventilation.  Considering that the air was a dry 102 degrees, it might not have been the best idea--really, it just felt like we were in a blast furnace every time a "breeze" came through.  We managed a two hour rehearsal with several breaks (much more than the one break we would normally get for this amount of work time) so people could splash water on their faces, get drinks, and generally try not to die.  I should have gotten up more often to drink--the locals in charge of the event had kindly brought flat upon flat of bottled water for us--but the heat was just making me so tired, it was all I could do to stay awake.  I would hunch down like I was melting in my seat whenever I wasn't playing, the energy it took to sit up straight was so great, and at one point I realized that the conductor had been trying to get my attention for a while in the middle of rehearsal.  Apparently I had missed an entrance while concentrating on winter scenes and trying to remember what ice felt like.  The second clarinetist kept helpfully pointing out how red my face was getting, foiling my attempt to pretend I was not hot.

Eventually the rehearsal ended and no one had passed out.  We were herded into the front lobby of the high school where the event organizers had brought many very long, party tray-style sub sandwiches cut into little pieces.  There were several different fillings to choose from, bags of salty potato chips, and more bottled water for our lunch.   As is generally my tendency when I feel overheated, I wasn't particularly hungry, but I thought the veggies in the sub might add a little moisture to my system, and the tiled floor was so very cold and inviting.  Tables and chairs had been set up, enough to accommodate our entire group, but most people had chosen to stay close to the floor where it was cooler and one would have less distance to fall if they started feeling any worse.  These organizer people sure were perky, though--they were dressed in red and white striped vests with bright blue shirts with the town's logo underneath, several of them also wearing American flag-inspired visors.  They handed out little hat pins with the centennial logo and kept pushing the ham sandwich, apparently not a big hit with my cohorts.  They were so thrilled about the centennial, and so grateful that we were there to add "a touch of class", as ham-pusher Barb put it, to the celebration.  I wanted to like these people.  It's not that I disliked them; actually, I had just lost the will to experience emotion at all, except perhaps for a slight feeling of dread every time we were herded to the next location.

Mercifully, the personnel manager left us on the cool linoleum floor of the high school until just before the show, so we didn't have to stand around very long in the heat when we weren't earning our paychecks.  We loaded up the buses and drove the four blocks to the park where we would give our concert.  It was to be an hour of patriotic music with no intermission, which I thought was absolutely brilliant.  Don't leave us out there any longer than necessary.  We had been briefed that we would be in a band shell, but because the conductor didn't know what direction it was facing, he advised us to bring our sunglasses.  He shouldn't have been as worried about that as about what the organizers called a 'band shell".  As it turns out, it is a "picnic shelter" to the rest of the world.  So, as we arrived, elderly men were hurriedly (for them) moving the metal folding chairs from the picnic shelter, where they had crammed things in around picnic tables and a grill that were cemented into place, to the only open, level plot of land large enough to hold us--in full sun.  I could see the local bank's lighted sign from where I sat, obnoxiously flashing the current temperature: still 102.  The string players were in an uproar, worried that the thin, delicate, and ancient walls of their precious (really!) instruments would be irreparably damaged.  Woodwind players alternately whimpered, sighed loudly, and mumbled about wanting a pay raise.  The brass and percussion players stared stoically ahead, arranging their music on their stands as best they could with clothespins to foil the sporadic, sudden breezes that were too few and far between.  I thought briefly about crying at the hopelessness of the situation, but I didn't have the moisture left in my body to form tears.

I don't really know how the concert went, to tell you the truth.  I wasn't concentrating on the music much at all, but rather on just sitting upright, thinking about cold things, and not playing during any silences or after pieces had ended.  The crowd seemed very happy.  I don't think anyone was younger than 50, but there were a good number of them, and they clapped and smiled heartily, whooping it up when we played the state song.  At one point I saw some movement in my peripheral vision and was curious enough to look: the second trombonist, with a poker face that would make 'em proud in Vegas, calmly got up, walked over to the nearest park garbage can, and unloaded all of the contents of his stomach.  He then composed himself, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, and returned to his seat to finish the concert. I remember thinking, slowly and deliberately to myself, "I will never do an outdoor gig again".  And to this day, I haven't.

New Book! Discount Price!

New and available at a discount price* to you, the loyal (or occasional, or first-time) readers of this blog!  

My little collection of humorous (I hope) essays, some of which have found their way to this blog, is ready and available through Create Space Press here.  It's 110 pages of pee-in-your-pants fun!  

*Enter discount code UJFDNWB2 for $2.00 off when you check out. 

Special edition: I don't like to travel near kids

Quiz: does this picture make you want to a) comfort and snuggle or b) run screaming?

This is where I prove undeniably what a horrible person I am. Besides the bad service and hectic seating, I have another pet peeve on airplanes: small children.

I have already named names in this blog (and some of you were pretty pissed about it), so I’ll just start out by saying that, on my recent flight cross-country, I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of my trip with Frontier Airlines.

But when it comes to your seating arrangements, all you can do is roll the dice and hope you get someone good as your seatmate. I prefer the elderly, sullen twentysomethings with iPods, and middle-aged women. I do not prefer small children. I know, their eyes and ears are too big for their heads (cute), their snarled hair permanently, adorably, looks post-nap, and they say the darndest things, but I do not want to sit next to them. And until society gets honest about the necessity of boarding kennels for all children under the age of 12 (am I really the only one who’s thought of this?), you’re always going to run that risk. I had not had the pleasure of a seat kicker, arm pincher, or screamer in my personal space for a very long time, so of course it I had to pay my dues.

I do not know this child’s name because I kept mp3 player turned way up for the entire flight; I will call her Sparkle Toes. I will call her that because she had pink rhinestone-encrusted shoes which felt very bad when pressed into my thigh. Sparkle Toes was seated next to me, and on the other side was her clearly inconvenienced, bleach-haired surfer-wannabe dad. His lack of attention got worse as the flight continued and Sparkle Toes got more and more wiggly, as if he had been forced at knife point to donate sperm and then was gallingly asked to look after said creation. Well I don’t know, maybe he was. Who am I to say?

The first thing I learned about children from Sparkle Toes is that they have a decided lack of a sense of personal space. As an adult, I always make an effort not to rub body parts with strangers because, as much as I would love this (not really), I understand that it might make others a bit uncomfortable. Now, I know that level of awareness might be too much to ask from a 3 or 4 year old—I imagine that’s where the parent comes in. In my utopia, accompanying sperm donor stays awake, watches said wondrous creation, and says things like, “Sparkle Toes, precious child, please stop moving that strange lady’s arm rest while she is resting her arm on it and trying to write.” Or, if you prefer, “Sparkle Toes, magical fruit of my loins, please do not stand on your seat and play with that lady’s dangly earrings. I know that they are very shiny and inviting, but they are attached to a stranger’s earlobe, and you must first ask consent to behave like this.” Finally, how about “Sparkle Toes, dearest darling light of my life, please remove your bare feet from that woman’s tray while she is trying to eat her Combos.”

Rather, when these things happened (and they did), Sperm Donor sighed, placed his early mid-life crisis head on his hand, and turned toward the little t.v. screen in front of him.

Now as a childless asshole, I don’t want to fall into the trap of assuming I know how to parent. I have been told that it’s annoying to actual parents. But this is my theory: toddler monkeys must be taught how to act by adult monkeys, and constant monitoring is necessary in this project. It’s a continuation of my theory on my neighbors’ pit bulls: if they run around and try to kill you every chance they get, it’s not necessarily the poor dog’s fault, but the owner who has not kept up with his responsibilities in training his dog accordingly.

I think it all just sounds exhausting, so I have chickens instead.