Closer to Fine, Closer to Old

Elizabeth and I went to see the Indigo Girls last night. They performed at the Bob Carr, an intimate venue that seats maybe 500 - 600 people. We enjoyed the opening band, Three5Human, who were so good in a Lenny Kravitz/funk-rock way that I bought their album at iTunes. Three young women got up to dance more often than was polite, waving their wide asses in our faces a little too frequently. But since the three knew all of the words to the songs [and thus qualified as real fans], it was hard to stay annoyed for long.

I had seen the Indigo Girls in concert years ago, after the release of their third or fourth album. That show had been wild, so I tried to prepare Elizabeth for more of the same. They had performed at the Peabody Hotel, in a basement banquet room. Although the stage was slightly raised, the floor was level and the seats were rows and rows of dining room chairs. For a better view, everyone started to stand on the chairs, dancing and clapping. As it was the only way to see, I remember getting up on a chair as well, an act of balance I would never attempt today. Back then, the Indigo Girls were younger and leaner, as was their audience. And what now seems dangerous, uncomfortable, and inconvenient seating was, at the time, just an opportunity for a bunch of young people to have fun.

The audience last night was, as Elizabeth put it, Chablis-sipping yuppies, what those foolish young people from 15 - 20 years ago have become. The chatter around us was middle-age talk about professional jobs, mortgages, and the like. The clothing, the drink choices, the behavior all smacked of maturity, not abandon and folly. Most of us would have happily stood for "Closer to Fine" but preferred sitting in the comfortable chairs, tapping out the beat with a palm to the knee or a heel to the floor, not dancing in the aisles. For god's sake, Elizabeth and I paid $25 for valet parking at the downtown Marriott, a luxury and expense that I could not have afforded on top of the ticket cost 20 years ago.

I did enjoy going to the concert, even though the performance fell on a school night. Listening to an album is enjoyable, but seeing artists create the music live is inspiring. I really need to schedule more things out in the future. But, boy, have I aged, a fact that the concert communicated in clear ways.

The First Dragonflies of 2007

The temperature was in the low 80s today, so Elizabeth and I decided to spend the MLK holiday at Moss Park. We stopped at Publix, got an "ultimate" sub and organic Cheetos, and picknicked by Lake Mary Jane.

After a hike on the nature trails, Elizabeth sat by the lake to write; I went off to confirm that we have dragonflies in Florida in January. I didn't expect to find any, but once near the edge of the canal that connects Lake Mary Jane to Lake Hart, I caught the familiar sparkle of wings.

Not only did I find dragonflies, I found a new species for me, blue corporals, or Libellula deplanata. At first I thought they were little blue dragonlets, but after reading Dunkle's description of behavior [perching close to the ground] and female coloring [I saw reddish-brown versions], I think that I have photographed blue corporals instead. Dunkle says that blue corporals make their first appearance in Florida in January, so these guys are right on schedule:




It's nice to start the new year with a new species!

Tested by the Gods

Tonight, around 8 p.m., I started to take the dogs for their last walk of the evening. Yo-Yo and I always go first. We don't really walk; we just go down the street so that she can smell the four corners at the end of the block. Like a wine connoisseur, she evaluates with real concentration single blades of grass, the sign posts, the bases of the big oak trees at the edges of lawns. If the weather is really rainy or cold, she just pees in the front yard and wants to come right back inside to her warm spot on the sofa.

We noticed an old black guy pushing a shopping cart. This sight was odd as I live in a residential neighborhood, not downtown. It is an old neighborhood, so it is more readily accessible than all of the new subdivisions farther from the city center, the ones with a single entrance where all the streets end in cul-de-sacs. But my neighborhood is suburban residential, so we don't see homeless guys. As the night was chilly, Yo-Yo wasn't interested in more than a quick pee, after which I took her inside to get Bug. When Bug and I got outside, I noticed that the homeless guy had made his way up my street and was in Elizabeth's next-door yard picking grapefruit off her tree.

Bug was inspecting the spot where Yo-Yo had peed, so I just stood there watching the homeless guy. Elizabeth wouldn't have minded the man raiding her tree; a couple of well-off yuppies who live in the neighborhood routinely trespass in her yard for fruit. This tree produces so many grapefruit that even with robbing neighbors and bags picked for friends and family, the tree leaves plenty to rot on the ground. When Bug was done inspecting Yo-Yo's pee, he headed for the street, and his jingling tags alerted the homeless guy that we were out.

"Ma'am?" he called. "Ma'am?"

When I realized he wanted something from me, I pulled Bug back into the house and locked the door.

Having been kidnapped from a 7-11 parking lot several years ago, I just don't deal with strange men at night. But as soon as I heard the deadbolt slide into place [noting, as any college composition teacher would recognize, that my life had become a Brent Staple's cliché ], I felt bad. I am well schooled in Greek mythology and know the code of hospitality. I have read of one poor mortal after another ignoring someone in need only to discover that the person was actually a god testing the human's good will.

I guess last night I failed.

Back in the Day

Yesterday, on the first day back to campus, still adhering to my New Year's resolutions about healthy eating—I brought whole-grain pretzels and vegan chicken noodle soup [Just add water and microwave!]—a mommy colleague accosted me to order Girl Scout cookies. I said no, in part because my colleague's daughter wasn't in tow. It's just wrong to push high-fat cookies on January 4, but it's so much more wrong to have moms selling cookies for their daughters.

I am reaching an age when I remember back in the day.

I was never a Girl Scout—I have been avoiding professional organizations since grade school—but my sister was. I remember helping Melody load up the rusted, red-metal wagon with boxes of cookies, after which we went door-to-door hawking thin mints. We were unsupervised, responsible for the money and cookies ourselves. The troop leader always had a sales contest to motivate the girls; whoever sold the most boxes won a bicycle or some other cool prize, which inspired our forays far from home. Melody always came in second, and when I think back, I now assume the contest was rigged. Our neighborhood—blue-collar working class—bumped up against a more affluent section of the city, all of the kids attending the same elementary school. I'm sure that the troop leader deferred to the wealthier parents, alerting them how many boxes they personally had to purchase to keep their daughters ahead of Melody, who was quite the saleswoman.

Back in the day, Girl Scouts developed independence, learned money management and the value of competition, and honed sales skills. Today, if my mommy colleague is any indication, the girls learn instead to rely on adults to do all of their work. I'm not opposed to Girl Scouts and their mothers sitting outside supermarkets selling boxes of cookies; I assume that the grocery stores require the adult presence for liability issues. I realize that in a world where children routinely get kidnapped or molested, that going door-to-door isn't an option any longer either. But to buy cookies from an adult without the actual Girl Scout present, realizing that the scout will later receive an unearned award, is just wrong.

As I said, I'm reaching that age when I remember back in the day when selling Girl Scout cookies meant dragging a heavy, squeaky, difficult to maneuver wagon all over the city—risking blisters, exhaustion, even robbery—for a colorful embroidered badge and, with any luck, a brand-new bicycle.

Even at work I catch myself responding with "Well, back in the day ..." For example, at the end of last semester, two of my colleagues were responsible for a group of 150 students. The "in charge" professor was tenured; he was paired with a much younger, temporary-contract colleague. Mr. In-Charge, despite the importance of the event, failed to show up on time, leaving Ms. Temporary Contract waiting in the auditorium lobby with 150 irate students. The gossip is that she just waited. She didn't call security to come unlock the door; she didn't contact the department office for directions. Her name didn't have "in charge" beside it on the assignment sheet, so she chose to stand there and broadcast her ineffectiveness. If last semester had been her first, I would understand, but she has worked at the college for a number of years and should know how to make things happen. But like Mommy Colleague's daughter, she has learned to let the "real" adults do everything and, when they're not around, just let nothing get done.

My second semester at the college, my primary duty was staffing the lab component of college-prep courses. I supervised/helped students who were working individually on problem areas in reading and writing. One evening during the first week of classes, a group of 25 students arrived in the lab. They had been sitting in an upstairs classroom for half an hour waiting for the instructor to show up. Now this happened back in the day, the late 80s, when I didn't have instant access via the Internet to faculty schedules. The students had an evening class, so the department office was closed. I had no one in authority for them to contact.

I could have shrugged my shoulders and told them that I didn't know what they should do. I could have advised them to go home when they got tired of waiting. But instead, I made an executive decision. Even though I was beginning only my second semester, I knew that the first meeting of prep classes included a "diagnostic" that determined what students worked on when they came to lab. I had copies of the diagnostic, so I had everyone sign an attendance sheet and take the test. I gave them the department phone number so that they could contact the office the next day to learn what had gone wrong. I told them not to worry, that there had to be a logical explanation for their professor's absence. I collected everyone's work as they finished.

It turned out that the dean, who, back in the day, handwrote faculty schedules on a tabled form, had told the instructor that she taught on Thursday night instead of Tuesday, the evening when the students showed up. No one was upset because I had not wasted anyone's time. The students performed a meaningful task and got credit for their presence, and the professor didn't lose an entire three-hour block of teaching time. "The only other thing I would have done," she explained as she thanked me, "was go over the syllabus, and we can do that next Tuesday." My dean was especially pleased because his error did not result in angry students, an angry faculty member, and a class beginning badly, as it would have if I had just waited.

And I didn't just wait because my childhood experiences had taught me to take responsibility and act—advantages of growing up "back in the day."

In Retrospect, Tonight's Dinner Wasn't That Bad

Elizabeth and I went to Brio's Tuscan Grille for dinner tonight. Elizabeth had prepared an elaborate early New Year's meal while Madeline and Joseph were here, featuring a $70 prime rib, and I wanted to return the favor and take her out someplace nice to eat.

Unfortunately, the restaurant was chaotic and incompetent. Our bad experience began when the hostess seated us for our 4:30 reservation at a table that wasn't staffed with a waiter until 5 p.m. Elizabeth eventually went to complain, but we waited another five or so minutes before anyone came to greet us. The poor waiter apologized and promised to make it up to us, but that was not to happen, as he immediately got a huge table of Brazilians who neither spoke nor read English. I watched our waiter spend 30 minutes just trying to take their orders.

When our tournedos arrived, we discovered that the chef had mistaken medium rare for medium well. One of Elizabeth's little filets had the consistency of a piece of charcoal. She insisted on speaking to the manager, who took her entire meal off the ticket. We were so unhappy that we left without crème brûlée or cappuccino, two extravagences we enjoy when we eat there.

In retrospect, though, tonight's meal wasn't that bad, just disappointing. My worst restaurant experience happened many, many years ago. My father had come to town and wanted to assemble and feed the family in the excessive and expensive manner that is his style. We had reservations at a steak house; I made the mistake of walking over to my grandmother's house, where my father picked us both up. I'm sure that a step-mother accompanied Dad on this trip to Florida, but which one I don't recall. We met my sister and her dick-brain first husband at the restaurant. Dick-Brain was an assistant manager at a Firestone; he met my sister Melody while selling her tires after a boyfriend's ex-girlfriend had slashed hers.

Melody and Dick-Brain had driven in from Lakeland. They arrived first and waited in the bar drinking. After greeting them, we followed the hostess to a table where the horror began.

The waitress arrived, which immediately soured my father, for he believes that men are the only capable servers. The waitress detailed the specials and began to take drink orders. My sister and Dick-Brain ordered a second round of whatever they had gotten from the bar. Dad was paying, so they planned to get smashed on free booze. This was years ago when we were all a lot younger—so young, in fact, that the waitress asked to see ID to confirm that Melody and Dick-Brain were both 21.

Despite having driven an hour from Lakeland, despite the very real possiblity that they would be drunk on the way home, die in a car crash, and need identification so that cops could call their next-of-kin, neither of them had a driver's license. Dick-Brain mentioned that the bartender had had no problem serving them.

The waitress explained that she would lose her job if she didn't check ID; Dick-Brain countered that he would just walk back to the bar when he and Melody needed their next drink. Dick-Brain was displeased because he, rather than my father, would have to pay for any future alcohol. My father growled, "Just get them their drinks," but the waitress stood her ground.

Now Dick-Brain should have apologized and ordered Cokes; it was his and my sister's fault that they didn't have their licenses, not the waitress's fault that her job had rules. Meanwhile, my father stewed; he couldn't ask to see the manager about this problem since the waitress was clearly in the right, but on his face, I could see him planning the many ways he would make the waitress miserable as the meal progressed.

We ordered our food, and while we waited for it to arrive, Dad and Dick-Brain bitched about the waitress. We were a party of six at a large round table in an intimate little room with four or five other tables of guests. Dad and Dick-Brain were loud and mean, and I could tell that their conversation was making everyone within earshot uncomfortable. I'm sure that other wait staff delivered the gist of their comments to our poor waitress.

When the meals arrived, my father found something wrong with his and sent it back. When the waitress grabbed his plate only, he insisted that she take everyone's with her because we were there to eat together, that he refused to watch everyone being polite and letting their food get cold while he waited for the return of his steak.

The waitress took away all of our dinners, fixed whatever Dad had found complaint with, and returned. My father then scrutinized everyone's dish. He found something wrong with someone's plate—maybe the bernaise sauce had thickened on the meat, maybe the vegetables looked wilted, I don't remember. He made a big production of how he wasn't going to let his family eat inferior food because a stupid waitress had messed up his initial order. He demanded to speak to the manager.

Our frazzled waitress left to get her boss. I was nauseated with Dad's behavior long before this latest outburst; dinner was irrevocably ruined. I should have excused myself and left the restaurant, but I didn't have a car, and the pair of dress shoes I was wearing would have tortured my feet during the five-mile walk home. Plus, Dad was such a tyrant. Even though I was already an adult, gainfully employed at the college, I felt like a child in his presence and couldn't stand up for myself or for the waitress.

The manager took away all of our dinners a second time. Then he served our table through the rest of meal; we never saw the waitress again. Even though we now had a male attending to our needs, my father criticized every part of the experience. Dick-Brain, who was enjoying watching Dad control the staff, egged him on.

I refused ever to eat with that group again, fabricating responsibilities that I couldn't escape when asked to join them. Melody soon after divorced Dick-Brain and moved to Husband #2, so the possibility of that particular combination of personalities disappeared. I have never since allowed my father to pick me up, insisting that I meet him at the restaurant in my own car. As I recall this meal with my father, I realize that I would rather suffer through a bad experience happening to us, as occured tonight, than watch people at my table bullying the staff.