That blasted 1977 cheerleading rejection, times a thousand

When I was in ninth grade, I wanted to be a cheerleader. Now, anyone who knows me is probably well aware that I never should have expected cheerleading to be my thing, for a variety of reasons -- chief among them the fact that I am not, and never have been, built for flipping and flying and things. But back in 1977, my 14-year-old self reasoned that because I could dance and because I also could enunciate precisely, I would make a great cheerleader.

The judges, understandably, did not agree, despite the fact that I had worked darned hard on my cartwheels. So I went home with some kind of “thanks for participating in tryouts” certificate, and I cried. Boy, did I cry. For days. That event marked my first real rejection, and it stung.

So here I am, 35 years later, feeling that same sting. It’s over something equally silly, when I really think about it. But despite the silliness of the way it all transpired, it hurts.

As my co-worker Dave puts it, I am very “relational.” I care about connecting with people, and when I make a friend, even if our time together is short-lived, I carry around, in my head and heart, that person’s smile and laugh and birthday and favorite color. I love finding common bonds and building on them, and I love the long histories I have with so many people in my life.

So, here’s the silly part: One of those people –- a person I’ve known since before my ill-fated cheerleading tryout -– decided he didn’t want to be my friend anymore on Facebook. I found out when I checked to see if he had uploaded any recent photos of his daughters, and Facebook invited me to connect with him, telling me we had 24 mutual friends.

There must be some mistake, I reasoned. But then, something told me to check the account of a friend who used to be close to both this friend and me, and sure enough, he was gone, too.

I was baffled. Although my feelings were immediately hurt, I also felt incredibly foolish; I’m not 13 years old, and the fact that I’m “friends” on Facebook with some people and not others should not impact me in the least. But those two people … wow. I had no idea what I could have done to cause such old and faithful friends to want to cut ties with me.

I stewed for a couple of days. Then, on the advice of another friend, I shot an email to the original unfriender. I’ve remained closer to him over the years than I have to his cohort, and it was his absence I had initially noticed.

In my email, I apologized for asking the question I was about to ask, and then I plowed forward: I had noticed that he had chosen to disconnect from me, and I was sorry if I had done anything to offend him.

A week later, I received a response. My friend told me that my expressing my political opinions on Facebook had turned him off. Although I had written very few statuses about my political views, I hadn’t exactly tried to hide those views, and I had commented on and “liked” friends’ responses, and some of them had shown up on his news feed. (And, oh, yes -– there was also that giant photo essay I posted the evening of the president’s visit. So I guess I had been a bit transparent.)

And although he still considered me a friend, he didn’t want to be connected to me electronically anymore. We could “agree to disagree” silently, across the miles.

I finished reading his response and sat back to process it. And while the 49-year-old me appreciated the honesty of his words, the 14-year-old me wiped away a few tears. Yes, Facebook can be juvenile and silly. But it’s also the primary way I stay in touch with friends who no longer are part of my daily life. And I knew I would miss his thoughtful posts about his work and his hobbies, and the photos of his lovely girls.

And I wondered: Would I ever make a similar choice? And I came to the conclusion that I absolutely would not.

I have friends and extended family members whose political views, religious views and even global worldviews differ wildly from mine. I don’t even have long histories with some of my conservative friends, and there are a few I have never actually met in real life; we’ve connected via other hobbies or intellectual pursuits. And yet, these friends enrich my life; they make me think. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t sometimes tempted to “hide” the posts that rankle me, but cut off all contact? I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t.

And yet, my friend -– the one who walked me though breakups and bad math scores, the one who made me mixtapes and made me laugh and had been there when I truly needed him -– was unable to see enough value in the non-political parts of me to keep me around. And I decided: While the whole “unfriending” thing is pretty silly, it constituted, to me, a big-deal rejection of our shared history.

I remember leaving school at the end of the day I had found out I hadn’t made cheerleading. I remember walking out of the building and seeing pretty little Julie Drilling, who had been my grade-school classmate, holding a pink rose to signify that she had been asked to become a cheerleader. Julie was thin and cute and nice, and seeing her standing there, quietly, with her rose reminded me of all I wanted to be, and of all the ways I had, in my mind, fallen short. And I was sobbing before I hit the parking lot.

A few days later, though, I was back to concentrating on my own talents and realizing that I would absolutely be OK. I realize that now, too, of course … but as I grow older and know I’ve used up more life than I have left, the relationships I’ve held onto have proven themselves to be increasingly dear to me.

And because I continue to care about my friend, I’ve decided that my tears aren’t silly, and maybe I’ll shed a few more of them from time to time. I’ll also be thankful for the kind of friend I’ve chosen to be, and I guess I’ll also be grateful to him for, in effect, reminding me how to be an even better one to the people who have chosen to keep me around.

A stepparenting rulebook: uncertainty, regret, and ironing

I don't believe any child ever spends his or her formative years thinking, "When I grow up, I want to be a stepparent." Kids might dream of becoming a mom or dad one day, but the once-removed nature of stepparenting isn't easily to understand, let alone aspire to.

I became a stepparent nearly nearly seven years ago, and like most stepparents, I didn't break down and separate the relationships -- e.g., today I'm getting married, and today I'm also forming important-but-undefined relationships with four other humans. I assumed, as I'm sure most people do, that everything would simply fall into place.

There's so much to be written on the topic. But suffice it to say that in my opinion, step-relationships are difficult because they are so undefined -- to coin a cliche, there's no rulebook. And if you happen to have multiple stepkids, each relationship is going to be unique.

So many variables play into the relationship: Is the child's other parent still living? How much time does the child spend with that person? How does the other parent feel about you, the stepparent, and about your relationship with the child?

How contentious was the parents' divorce, and to what degree was the child involved and impacted? How old is the child, and what's his or her basic personality and temperament? And to put it simply: Does the child like you?

All those translate to roughly 8 million variables that, on most days, can seem to conspire against success.

Stepparenting is not for the faint of heart, the thin of skin, and the easily defeated. It's not the natural order of things, the way things are supposed to transpire. And unless you're very fortunate, it can bring you to your knees on a regular basis.

But then, there are days you have enough presence of mind to think of it like this:

When the child whose life you entered when he was not quite 5 is getting ready to go to his first school dance, and you're ironing his clothes. You know he doesn't really care who is ironing them; he's far more concerned, probably, with trying to figure out how the heck a school dance works, and how, to a larger degree, the whole dating thing works.

But the ironing, to you, exemplifies what being a stepparent is all about: Not Cinderella-type drudgery, but the behind-the-scenes nature of the job. You're not the one who ever gets kudos for anything, nor should you be, and you're good with that. But you've become pretty good at the little unseen things that let the child, and his parents, know that you want to help that child thrive and succeed.

As you iron, you think about teaching that child to read. You think about the eggshells you've walked on so as not to smother him; you think about the time his eyebrows fell out and how you tried not to draw attention to the fact that he looked like an alien. You think about the fact that you can't really hug him, because A. he's 15 and B. he doesn't want you to.

And you think about the time that you broke the news to him that his good friend had died. And because you're not the parent but the stepparent, and you have your own kids to attend to, you had to leave the house immediately after delivering that horrible news. And you think about how you've always somehow regretted the way things had worked out that day, as you drove away and left his dad, who's not always comfortable with feelings, to deal with the most awful thing that had ever happened in the child's life.

You think about the fact that even though this is not your child, you have a history with him. But you've consciously tried not to overstep your bounds, because your own children have stepparents, too, and you know how it feels to be on the other side. So sometimes you've chosen to hang back.

But in the end, although such relationships are complicated, you hope, somehow, that your meager contribution to your stepson's big night -- the ironing of the shirt and the pants -- can convey the fact that even though you never really know what your place is, you really, truly do care.

Weekly Readers and respect, 1972 style

When Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, I was 11. My family was in Clear Lake, as we often were during summers of my childhood; that particular evening, we were back-to-school shopping at Bergo's, a department store in the next big town, Mason City.

Bergo's had TVs in its windows back then, and from inside the store, we noticed several people huddled around them. We ran outside just in time to hear Nixon give the end of his speech "...therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow."

I remember, following those words, silence. By that time, no one liked Nixon a whole bunch; my family hadn't really been a Nixon family anyway, and his Watergate antics had sealed the deal.

But despite the fact that no one was feeling the love on that August night, all the adults around me seemed sad. Why? Because Nixon was the president, and back then, it seemed easier for everyone to root for the guy at the top.

I know that's more my perception, probably, than reality: I was a kid. I know a lot of people were anti-Kennedy, and Johnson wasn't the favorite of many during the Vietnam war. And as the media became more a part of our daily lives and our ways to obtain information multiplied, we learned more about the realities of the men behind the podium, and people grew increasingly wary.

But as a young person -- in school, at home, wherever -- we children who came of age in the '70s were taught to demonstrate respect for the highest office in the land. That respect doesn't seem to be a part of our lives anymore. And it makes me sad.

I know what you're thinking: "She's a Democrat. She supports Obama. She saw him yesterday. And she's mad at people who don't believe the way she does."

I do support the president wholeheartedly, but you'd be wrong about the way I'm feeling. I grew up in a family of independent voters, and although the adults in my life leaned to the left more often than not, there were a few years that we had Republican campaign signs in our yard. (And I continued the tradition: Although I strongly align myself with the Democratic party, the first candidate I ever campaigned for, although I was too young to vote at the time, was John Anderson.)

I just think, as simple as it sounds, that we could all stand to be a bit more respectful. It starts at the top: Some political ads are heinous. But at the same time, we're all responsible, as humans, for our behavior toward one another. When did it became OK to feel you have license to behave disrespectfully and downright horribly to people who don't believe as you do?

When it comes to expressing our opinions about politics, Facebook brings out the worst in all of us. I'll admit it: Before I started policing myself on the issue, when posts got the better of me, I often responded negatively to viewpoints that opposed mine.

But then it occurred to me -- quick study that I am -- that a person has the right to write whatever he or she wants to on his or her wall, and unless I have something nice to say, it's my job to say nothing at all. It would be so nice if others subscribed to the same theory.

Here's an example: A Facebook friend of mine reposts a meme that proclaims, "No other choice -- I stand with Romney." I may raise an eyebrow, and I may wish silently for the opportunity to converse with that person about other options. But I don't respond. Why? Because that person's choice is none of my damned business. And it's his or her damned wall.

Contrast that to yesterday, when I posted photos and a couple of statuses about seeing the president at Living History Farms. Never did I say, "Be like me! Vote for President Obama!" and yet the first two comments on my post -- comments that I deleted -- were negative and sarcastic.

Yes, it's campaign season. The president is running again. I went to see him to show my support. But guess what? Even if it were the 11th hour of his second term, I would have gone to see the guy. Why? Yes, because I really like him, but also because he's president. His visit presented an opportunity to come face-to-face with someone who's an important part of our history.

I don't pretend to believe I can change opinions with anything I write, and that's not my objective. I also realize that my posts and photos about yesterday's visit may have irritated some of my friends, and to that, I say, in all sincerity: Hide my posts if they bother you. Please.

But don't be mean. Don't be sarcastic. And don't act as though your opinions are the only ones that count. I'm going to repeat the directions Mrs. McConathy gave my fourth-grade class as she handed out our Weekly Readers with Nixon and Senator George McGovern on the front in 1972. She said something like this:

"Chances are you support the candidate your parents support. But it's important to treat each other with kindness and respect, and not make fun of anyone else's choice. It's also important to pray for the president, as he has the most difficult job in our whole country."

That will be my Facebook status one of these days. For now, I'll remind myself that just as my friends are made of more than their political opinions, so am I. Eight more weeks are left in this campaign season: Think we can spend that time being a little nicer to each other?

Joined at the hip? Not a chance, and it works just fine.

A couple of months ago, I was getting ready to go to the grocery store, and my husband was getting ready to do something else. My 15-year-old stepson ascended the stairs from his cavernous lair (otherwise known as the Man Cave, where his bed, his X-Box and cases of Mountain Dew live), shielded his eyes from the 1 p.m. "morning" sunshine, and asked, "Why don't you guys ever go to the store together?"

Well, for starters, until the new Hy-Vee came along, going to the grocery store wasn't fun. Neither my husband nor I enjoyed it, so I tended to slog through the big weekly trips while he handled the quick stops for dog food or paper towels. Dividing and conquering works well for us in many areas of life, and that's one of them ... and I had never really thought much about our way of doing things until Logan asked.

But then I started thinking about his question. Did he see his dad and me as not together enough? Did his mom and stepdad or friends' parents hang out together more? It's true: Kevin and I have never been joined at the hip. We married later in life, after we already had children and careers and interests. We're each pretty independent anyway, and our time alone had made us even more so. So by the time we decided to tie the knot, our lives and interests and activities were already in place.

That's not to say we didn't -- or we don't -- enjoy our time with one another. Kevin is probably one of the funniest people I know, and we enjoy some of the same things and have really great talks. But do we need to spend every waking moment together? Heavens, no. I don't want to spend every waking moment with anybody.

One of my best friends is most comfortable being with her husband nearly all the time. They shop for groceries together. They run errands together. They have the same hobbies. Similarly, a guy at work can't seem to function without near-constant time with his wife. More power to them, as their relationships really seem to work.

But then, we go to restaurants and we see this: couples our age or maybe a little older, sitting across from one another with nothing to say, looking bored and irritated. Couples who have run out of things to talk about.

Kevin and I don't run out of conversation. We both have jobs that are at least somewhat interesting to the other person, and our favorite separate pastimes are creative ones: I write. He builds things. We're both devoted to our children, and similarly obsessed with our dog. We agree about politics, morals, ethics -- all the big things. And as I mentioned, he makes me laugh. Hard.

Along with my children, he got me through my dad's illness and death. I like to think I was able to offer him some comfort when he lost his dad. He's been there for quite a few surgeries, and he even, as I've noted, once caught my vomit in a basin in midair and didn't even flinch.

I went to Europe without him; I went to the State Fair without him. I sure as heck go to the grocery store without him. He often goes to see family in Illinois without me. But when I'm the one who's been gone and I walk in the door after time apart, I'm really, really happy to see him. He represents "home" to me.

And I think it's pretty unlikely that anyone will ever catch us at Perkins glaring at each other across the table with nothing to say.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

When I was a college freshman, I met a girl I'll call Julie. She was smart and lovely and, to the chagrin of so many of us in the dorm, rail-thin despite having the appetite of a man six times her size. But you couldn't be jealous of her, not really, because underneath her long blond hair and perfect smile and size-2 body, she was just so genuinely nice.

So one day early in the year, Julie met a guy I'll call Nick, and eventually, they fell in love. Nick was a nice-looking guy, but most importantly, he was kind at a point in time when many guys care little about the way they treat others. Nick was inclusive and funny and sweet, and he walked through those next several months leading up to their wedding as if he had won the lottery. In his mind, he had -- I don't think he ever assumed Julie would love him back.

They married the summer after Julie's and my sophomore year. I transferred schools, made a new life with my new friends, and lost track of Julie and Nick. I would hear tidbits about them here and there; they had settled in the town in which we had gone to school, Julie was teaching kindergarten, and, finally, after many years, they had started a family.

Then one day, unbelievably, I heard this: Julie had died. She had been fighting cancer, with which she had been diagnosed when her children were tiny. But she hadn't won, and at age 40, with two still-small children, Julie died. And Nick, who had loved her so, was alone.

But not really alone -- he had the kids. His kids. Julie's kids. And by all accounts, he made up his mind early on that he would raise them on his own. But in one of the cruelest twists of fate I had ever heard, Nick also became ill. For a long while, his illness was managed, and he made things work.

But two nights ago, Nick died. His kids, Julie's kids, are 15 and 14. Fifteen and 14, and now they have no parents.

Crappy things happen to good people every day. We all know people who have died young. Died painfully. Died alone. But this is almost too much -- it's as if Fate said, "Get your happiness early, kids, because there's not going to be time for a lot of it." I imagine they did. I hope they did.

I don't know Julie and Nick's kids, and I doubt they'll ever read this. But if they happened to, I'd want them to know about the day I walked to class about a hundred feet behind the people who would become their parents.

It was a cold day, and Julie was putting on her parka on the way to class. She was walking and trying to get her arms in the sleeves and her hair got stuck in the back of the coat. And with a gesture so gentle that I'll never forget it, Nick reached in, untangled the hair, and laid it ever-so-gently on the outside of the coat. And then he leaned down and kissed the top of Julie's head, and they kept walking.

I envied Julie and Nick that day. I assumed they would have a golden life. It's my hope that they did. And as I read the words of Robert Frost, I almost think he must have time-traveled and known Nick and Julie.

Rest in peace, both of you. And to your children: Just know that your mom and dad, during that moment in time some some 29 years ago, were the people we all wanted to be.

Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Gabby Douglas, Michael Phelps ... and me

I’ve never been an athlete. Suffice it to say I’ve never even really tried to become an athlete. Some truths, as they say, are self-evident, and for me, that was one of them. Good speller? Yes. Good kick-ball teammate or tetherball partner? Nope. Not if you don’t want to lose.

But I’ve always loved the Olympics – to the point that if I had two weeks’ PTO to blow, I’d take time off and watch the coverage all day long. Bob Costas’ bad plastic surgery, be damned; I’m not looking at you anyway, Bob. I’m looking at the tears and the falls, the parents in the stands. The high-fives, the hugs. The drama.

When I was growing up, we were an Olympics family. The first Games I remember watching were in ’72, the year the terror unfolded in Munich. I still remember seeing the grainy pictures of the gunmen in the woolen ski masks. But equally vivid are the memories of Olga Korbut doing that backflip thing from the higher of the uneven bars and Mark Spitz with his seven gold medals fanned out across his chest.

Then came 1976 and Nadia with her perfect 10. From there, the years, and the athletes, run together, but when I think of family vacations, I flash back to the five of us spending our evenings huddled around some little hotel TV if the Olympics happened to be on while we were away from home.

Globally shared experiences are a little difficult to come by these days, but the Olympics do tend to facilitate a few every two years. No matter if we happened to be watching “Dance Moms” or “Breaking Bad” for a little while, we all turned back to NBC to watch Gabby clinch the all-around and Phelps accept his final gold medal. And we all talked about those experiences the next day.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to possess the grace of a world-class athlete. I’ll never know, but for a scant two weeks every other year, I can imagine, and I can choke up at the sight of a runner with blades where his feet should be or a 16-year-old girl who spent two years with people who weren’t her family so she could see if she had what it took.

She did, and I’m in awe of her for refusing to be scared away by the voices that tell us all, “Don’t bother. Most people will never be that good.”

Even when they’re not that good -- 1,000 times more talented than I’ll ever be, but still, in Olympic frame of reference, not good enough -- I’ll watch them, and like many people, I’ll wonder “What if?” What if I had tried to become a pathologist in spite of my dad’s warnings that “people who aren’t good at math can’t be doctors”? What if I had, as a young person, stopped making mix tapes and laced up a pair of Nikes?

I wouldn’t have made it to the Olympics, but maybe I would have gotten a taste of what it’s like to push yourself harder than you ever thought possible. It’s on my bucket list to do that -- someday, in some way.

No, I’ll never know the feeling of gold around my neck. The upside, though? I'm equally certain I'll never be asked to stare into the face of Bob Costas.

The most "awesome" blog post ever

I realized it this morning when I called the pharmacy to ask for a prescription refill. The person on the phone told me my medicine would be ready after 11, and I responded, “That’s awesome. Thanks!”

Then I hung up the phone and thought, “Wait – that was good service, which is nice and all – but it probably wasn’t really ‘awesome.’”

And then I thought some more, and it hit me that I’ve gotten into the habit of over-emoting in response to mundane things. “Amazing” and “awesome” are two of the adjectives that immediately come to mind.

And I’m not the only one who’s fallen prey to this tendency: A friend visited Chicago this past weekend and posted on Facebook that his trip was “awesome.” (Was it really? Or was it just relaxing and fun?) And as I was exiting the elevator, a man told a woman on my floor to have an “amazing” week. (How about just an uneventful, productive one?)

I decided to do a little research on how the over-emoting tendency happened to evolve. Here’s what I found out: not much. Linguists don’t seem to have much to say on this topic. But some trace using the word “awesome” to describe things that are not to – I kid you not – Spicoli.

Who was Spicoli, those of you not as ancient as I am may ask? Jeff Spicoli was a surfer-dude character portrayed by Sean Penn in the 1982 movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Spicoli was perpetually stoned and, in one key scene, had a pizza delivered to his high-school classroom. Spicoli was, many would say, awesome.

But I digress.

Here are some things that are truly awesome, or awe-inspiring: the Grant Canyon. Niagara Falls. Stonehenge. The birth of a child. Surviving a plane crash. The word “benign” on a pathology report.

Here are some things that are not awesome: a new package of post-it notes. A good haircut. A trip to the Amana Colonies (unless you, or someone you know, gives birth there). A piece of gum, even if it’s really flavorful. A refill of my thyroid medication.

As a younger person who wanted very badly to be taken seriously in my professional life, I was very careful about my word choices. Now, as an old, lazy person who’s confident in her ability to make a living with the use of words, I’ve ironically become careless in the way I use them personally.

When I really think about it, what gets me is that using words like “awesome” and “amazing” makes me feel silly and sort of disappointed with myself for being unable to come up with anything better.

And others apparently are disappointed with me as well, even people I don’t know: I just read that an English poet has launched a campaign to stem the overuse of “awesome” … which is great, but ironic in that the English are just as guilty as overusing the word “brilliant.” (This I know first-hand, as I just returned from an awesome, brilliant trip there.)

In an effort to remove the words “awesome” and “amazing” from my vocabulary, I’m going to make an effort to match my adjectives the emotions that the particular actions generate in me. To the pharmacist: “That’s really helpful; thanks.” To the car dealer who comes down $1,000: “That’s a relief; I think I can work with that price.” To a friend who’s hired for a new position, perhaps a simple “Congratulations; that’s great news.”

But as I mentioned, I’m lazy. And I know myself; my best-laid plans often don’t make it out of the starting gate. But if I can at least be aware enough to improve my vocabulary, maybe people will be better able to focus on what I’m saying rather than how I’m saying it.

And that, in a word, would be … satisfying.

Certainly not awesome.