The Gay Uncle is trapped at LAX this morning, awaiting his flight to the midwest to continue his book tour. He’s quite Zen about air travel, so he’s not irritable or anything. Especially because being in an airport allows him to witness all sorts of interesting methods of dealing with kids. So far this morning he has witnessed: Children being yelled at by TSA agents to remove their “footwear” (A meaningless term to them.); Children being offered mocha-frappuccinos before boarding an international flight (Beg your pardon mommy, but that has enough caffeine in it to reanimate a dead horse; this might make it difficult for your child to remain in their seat during take off.); Children rollerskating through crowded gate corridors on their “Heelys” while their parents look on angry, powerless, and bewildered (You bought those dumb shoes, and let them wear them here; really, what did you expect?) Parents yelling at their children to “stop crying right now, or we’re not going to go to Disneyworld” (Are you really going to be able to enforce that threat?) G.U. wonders if he should wander around a bit and gather up some info for The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Family Trips.
An Uplifting Tale
Since G.U. is still in L.A. promoting his book, he thought he’d combine two relevant areas in todays posting: giving young children too much decision-making power, and plastic surgery. A mommy friend of his out here exemplified this combo in a story she told him at a party. Apparently, during a recent roughhousing session with her six year old, the boy accidentally ended up scratching the mother’s face. She wasn’t actually injured but since the woman is an actress, she was concerned about marring her most precious resource. “Can you see anything?” she asked the boy. “Did it leave a mark?” Her son shook his head. “No,” he said. “There’s nothing there but the usual lines on your forehead and around your mouth.” Horrified, the mother pulled back, and grabbed a mirror to examine herself (she always had one at hand). Her son looked over her shoulder and stared along with her. After a few moments of concerted posing, she turned to the boy. “Do you think mommy should have something done about these lines?” she asked. “Have them taken away or filled in?” The boy shrugged. “I’m used to your face the way it is.”
Guncle Radio
The Gay Uncle’s better half will be on the radio this weekend, narrating a full-hour radio documentary he produced for This American Life! G.U. 1 highly recommends that you listen.
The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar
In 1912 a four year-old boy named Bobby Dunbar went missing in a swamp in Louisiana. Eight months later, he was found in the hands of a wandering handyman in Mississippi. In 2004, his granddaughter discovered a secret beneath the legend of her grandfather’s kidnapping, a secret whose revelation would divide her own family, bring redemption to another, and become the answer to a third family’s century-old prayer.
For your local air-dates and times, check out “Find Your Local Station” on the This American Life main page (www.thisamericanlife.org). Or you can just listen to it here on-line.
In other Guncle Radio news, you can now listen to a 1/2 hour radio interview with G.U. 1 right here.
Communication Breakdown! (It’s always the same?)
Though he’s kicked them around plenty in his book, the Gay Uncle is always pleased to see his friends Kate and Dylan, who have moved out to L.A. (where he is currently stationed as part of the national GUG book tour). This is not only because he ABSOLUTELY ADORES them and their kids Max and Athena, but because they’re always full of confessional parenting stories that he can then claim and make fun of. Last night was a perfect example.
During after-dinner drinks at the world’s greatest bar, Gunc was gushing about the joys of the outsider position of “Uncle”, and relating his delight in how open his former preschool students were with him in discussing the struggles and pressures they’re facing in their adolescence. In response, Kate was bemoaning the difficulty she often has as a mom in getting her five year old son to tell her anything about his day. As G.U. spells out in his book (Chapter 11: Drop and Ditch-Starting School) it can often be difficult for a child to answer open ended questions like “What did you do in school today?” An entire day is an enormous and amorphous amount of time to a young kid, and so the question lacks the concrete and specific grounding they need in order to access relevant information. (Akin to asking an adult, “So, what do people do in America?”) Plus, kids really enjoy–and deserve–having aspects of their life that are separate from their parents. But every so often, kids just get in what we in the ed biz call a “talky” mood, and they spontaneously volunteer information about their lives.
Apparently Max was in one of these the other afternoon at pick-up time, pulling on his mom’s graphic-t and slouchy suede purse, and wanting to explain the complexities of some interaction he’d had with his peers, and some kind of growth he’d undergone as a result. Of course, the roadway of parent/child communication is a two way street, and at that moment, Kate was busy doing some important social networking with some of the other mommies. “I turned to him, my son,” she confessed last night, “and told him, I don’t have time for this right now. Tell me later. He walked away with his head down. And of course, when I asked him about it later, in the car, he didn’t want to talk, or had forgotten, or was withholding.” She sighed. “I can’t believe, the thing I ask for the most, when it’s offered up, I reject it.” G.U. nodded sympathetically, and thought, Isn’t that just like life?
Your Tongue Here
The Gay Uncle was asked an interesting question during one of his myriad radio interviews yesterday. “Since you seem to have no problem dishing out advice to your family and friends, do you also feel obliged to give pointers to strangers?” G.U. replied that, aside from telling slacker moms and dads (in the playground where he used to take his students) to curb the offensive behavior of their demon spawn, this was not his usual practice. But he did remember one time when he felt compelled to intrude. This was when he was on a field trip with a group of his students, heading home from the Empire State Building via public transportation (as always), and spotted an adorable three year old girl on the 6 train engaged in a rather problematic behavior: she was standing up, holding on to the subway pole with both hands–and licking it repeatedly with her tongue. Gunc leaned in to her casually unobservant mother, and said, “I’m really not sure that she should be doing that.”
Reunited
To celebrate the publication of his book, the Gay Uncle held a reunion yesterday at the school he used to run in Manhattan’s East Village. He wasn’t sure what to expect. He’d left the classroom some years ago, and since people move around quite a bit, he worried that his address lists were hopelessly out of date. Plus, he wondered how many (now) sullen/hip New York City teenagers would actually want to spend a sunny weekend afternoon hanging out in their old preschool? Well, not only was he amazed by the 50+ person turnout, he was riddled with absolute GLEE in talking to the kids, who had transformed from amazing little people into super-cool, intelligent, interesting and iconoclastic musicians, artists, animators, political activists, skaters, filmmakers, dreamers, and students. Plus, for someone whose own hair made the journey from black, to blue, to green, to orange during his years in the classroom–and who once held a poll in which his young charges voted on what color he should dye it next–Gunc was pleased to see that virtually every shade of Manic Panic hair dye was represented. His hat is off to all the LMDN grads. You kids are AMAZING.
Gay Uncle Reads at NYC Public Institution; God Punishes with Stormy Wrath
The Gay Uncle read from his book at the Children’s Museum of Manhattanyesterday. The event was well attended, and well received–by the people in the audience, that is. Apparently the (wo)man upstairs was not so pleased at the idea of having a Swish Tío tell “normal” folks how to raise their kids, and responded with a typhoon. Coincidence? Evidence thus far points to “no”. But more readings will ensue around the country over the next few weeks. We’ll have to wait and see if natural disasters follow G.U.’s path.
Sitter Scare
The Gay Uncle has been trolling the blogosphere recently, getting acquainted with the many parenting sites out there, which–not exactly being “in the demographic”–he’s never read before. While fascinated by all the delightful sounding recipes for “Russian Casserole” and “Vegan Pancakes” and by the myriad war stories of moms (and one or two dads) locked in brutal wars of attrition with their children over pretty much any petty issue imaginable, he’s really just looking for reviews and comments on his own book. While these have generally been overwhelmingly positive (thanks much to all the fans!), there has been an intriguingly consistent strain of critique: many people seem to resent or oppose G.U.’s suggestion that they occasionally get out of the house, and appear to have a real issue with the idea of EVER leaving their child with a babysitter.
Just to clarify, Gunc does not advocate pulling a total stranger in from a park or under a highway overpass to take care of junior. In the book, he outlines a complex process for finding an appropriate caregiver (Chapter 1) as well as describing a clear rationale for why leaving the house is important for parents as well as for their child’s optimal development. But there seems to be a national assumption that if you invite the nice teenage neighbor girl who you’ve known all her life into your home, she will immediately transform into a Satan-worshiping succubus, and will beat, belittle, and otherwise abuse your child. When he was a New York City preschool director, the Gay Uncle hired all sorts of teachers who, on first glance, may have seemed questionable–a pink-haired male Cherokee performance artist; a brittle upper-class woman from Bombay; a formerly homeless African American lady with tangled dreads; a fast-talking, chain-smoking, aging punk chick–but who he could tell, from interviewing them, calling their references, and observing them interacting with his students (all of which he recommends you do before hiring a sitter), understood how to speak and be with young kids, and had an inner sense of balance, caring and kindness. Think about your favorite babysitter from childhood. If you met her now, you might not hire her on first sight. But wouldn’t you be making a mistake?
Maybe this creepy caregiver consternation is shared only by a vocal on-line minority. G.U. is aware of the fact that our national news media certainly has a tendency to privilege stories of children-in-peril, often to a debilitating effect for new parents, who end up fearing that diddlers and kidnappers lurk around every corner. He is simply trying to empower people to break out of that cycle. Remember, you are not a perfect parent. Your child is not perfect. None of us is perfect. (Not even the Gay Uncle!) So you’re never going to find a perfect babysitter. But if you use the method outlined in the book, Gunc firmly believes that you’ll be able to find a number of them who are perfectly good enough.
Radio Day
You can hear your favorite Gay Uncle on Marconi’s wondrous wireless device all day long today. Just tune in to one of the myriad stations around the country on which he’ll be interviewed and listen to him make a total fool of himself.
Beyond Pink and Blue
The Gay Uncle was on the radio for the first time last night, peppered with questions for the sake of the “listeners” of OUT-Q, Gay Satellite Radio. He was quite certain how to respond to campy remarks about Liz Taylor’s knee replacements, and the near-successful stealth gay takeover of network television programming in the ’70’s, when everyone was either unaware or just too high to care. But he was less certain of how to react to the idea–presented by one of his interviewers–that a gay uncle’s job, when dealing with his butch lesbian friend’s kids, is to provide education in things “pink and girlie”. Now G.U. can swish with the best of them, but he’s also a gender constructivist of sorts (he’s been working on a new book about the subject called “Beyond Pink and Blue”) and thinks that part of the fun of being gay comes from questioning gendered stereotypes–gay, straight, or otherwise. He thus sees a role for himself in the life of his nieces and nephews beyond simply Hair and Makeup. He loves old trucks and gardening; attends drag acts and drag strips; collects 19th century English transferware and 21st century indie-rock. He sees life and gender as multivalent, in part because his lifelong work with kids has shown him that we all start out thinking that way.