The Essence of Character

As a reporter for several small-town newspapers, I've written a lot of obituaries. At small papers with correspondingly tiny reporting staffs, it was par for the course for reporters to be expected to drop everything - even deadline stories - to take death notices and obituaries phoned in from funeral homes. If you died today, chances are I could whip up a pretty decent obit for you in about 45 minutes.

Eulogies are another matter altogether. They are works of art, designed to touch those close to the deceased at the deepest levels - to remind them why they chose to take time out of their lives to show up at a funeral in the first place.

What a eulogy really does is force us to talk not just about what a person did, but about who that person was and what effect he or she had on everyone around them. It's greatest challenge is distilling and defining a person's character.

The gentleman himself, celebrating his 97th and final birthday.

This has been banging around in my head since my granddad, Marvin Pruden, left this mortal coil almost a week ago, and I'm exploring this now not because I've been asked to but because I feel that I should. You can feel free to read his exceptional obituary, which summed up his life effectively for a few column inches in the local newspaper, here.

But as obituaries are meant for publications in which space is still a premium, there's no way you could learn the true essence of his character from these few words.

Much of it you might infer from the details - his church memberships and participation might lead you to believe (correctly) that he was a man of faith and surpassing goodness and generosity. However, it's just as easy for someone with lifelong church membership to be an absolute son of a bitch. Believe me - I've known a few.


The real truth of his character, as with anything, lies in the details.

First, let's start with the superficial. He was a handsome man, who throughout his years bore a remarkable resemblance to baseball great Joe DiMaggio, so much that I actually once heard a former employee of his refer to him by that slugger's last name. He was also meticulous in his dress and grooming. Even as he lay dying, one of his final coherent requests as his hair was being combed was to please not forget the part.

Others have described him in ways far more concise and eloquent than I could. One community theater colleague of my father's, after granddad helped us one Sunday afternoon to construct a set for a play my dad was directing, said, "Your dad is the sort of man who irons the pants he paints in, isn't he?" Yep, that pretty much nailed it.

If it was Sunday during his more vigorous years, you could pretty well guarantee he would be in church singing in the choir, spending the rest of the day in his suit and tie (perhaps removing the jacket if he felt like relaxing).

Again and again, both in personal remembrances and in online comments to his obituary, he was recalled with one simple word - gentleman. Depending on the person, this was occasionally amended to include "Southern."


But what is a gentleman, really? How, as a writer, would someone get away with showing rather than telling someones gentlemanly qualities? And this allegedly post-racial age, how do you describe the Southern part to someone who is not intimately familiar with what that really means?


In the case of my grandfather, it was about more than just his immaculate dress and grooming. It was the way he carried and conducted himself. Behind the Sunday tie was a respect for the Sabbath that ran deep, but didn't overflow into zealotry. Behind the focus on appearance was the notion that if you looked good, those around you would be inspired and motivated to do the same.

As for the Southern part of his gentlemanly nature, it's important to note what a Southern gentleman is not. Folks from outside the South might imagine some Hollywood archetype (frequently inaccurate) that includes with it a hint of Foghorn Leghorn bluster, Big Daddy control, Boss Hogg flair, all tinged with a hint of post Civil War white supremacy.

But when someone in the South refers to someone as a Southern gentleman, what they're really referring to is one of the most valued facets of the Southern persona - hospitality. Not hospitality in the sense of "giving a great party," but more in the Bedouin sense, in which one is bound to give aid and comfort to anyone who asks for it - even one's enemies.

The people who can claim this experience with my grandparents are legion - close and extended family and assorted friends from every living generation and in every geographic region in which they've hung their hats. My grandmother never introduced herself as "Mrs. Pruden" to my friends - only as "grandmom." They were the universal grandparents, willing to embrace, feed, ask after and pray for anyone who crossed the threshold of their tidy 1950s rancher.

In my granddad's case, it was also a policy of treating everyone - regardless of their differences or appearance - with a basic level of respect. I can count the number of times a harsh word about another person crossed his lips, and even though he was born and raised during a time when Southerners were not known for their openness to or tolerance for others, he was not inclined to slurs or epithets. He was soft spoken and generally let people be who they were.

For many years during his career at Dupont, he was a supervisor at the company's May Plant in Camden, S.C. I get a feeling that he was both good at what he did and good to the people who worked for him, mainly because several former employees showed up at his viewing. I can count on a few fingers the bosses that I might remotely consider showing up to a funeral for. 
 
That philosophy also extended to me. Where other grandfathers rooted the ethos of doing tangible work (building or making something) might have balked at my decision to go into writing as a profession, he never questioned my career choice. Though he initially might have wondered exactly what it entailed to be a professional writer, he got a taste of it when he and my grandmother became the good-natured subjects of columns I would write for the three-day-a-week local paper that employed me. As I noted in the acknowledgements to my novel Immaculate Deception, they supported me materially, financially and emotionally, even thought the might not have been sure what I was up to most of the time.

I feel fortunate that I was able to spend as much time with him as I did, and that my children shared the same opportunity. However brief for them, they got a glimpse at perhaps the last true Southern gentleman they are likely to see.

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A Boy's-Eye View of Justice

As a father, I have dreaded since my son’s birth in 2004 the day I’d have to try to explain the brutality, tragedy and sheer incomprehensible evil behind the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Recently, we had discussed in somewhat abstract terms the events of that day, and as a result he possessed the rudimentary understanding of what happened that I deemed appropriate for someone who could handle the political intricacies and sci-fi combat of “The Clone Wars” but who remained mystified as to why some of his classmates were bullies and others weren’t.

I tried my best to offer him the truth without adding unnecessary details. In short, I told him some very bad people hijacked airplanes and flew two of them into a pair of skyscrapers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Lots of people died, and the skyscrapers collapsed.

I wasn’t expecting the topic to come up again until the annual remembrance of 9/11 that awaits us each September, with each bright, warm autumn day reminding us of the morning the horror was unleashed.

But a few weeks ago, a spring break trip to New York City offered another, unexpected opportunity to discuss what cruelty some grown-ups are capable of. For our second day in the city, we had planned to visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and I knew our route to the embarkation point at Battery Park would take us right by Ground Zero.

Having not visited lower Manhattan since long before that fateful day, I was unprepared for the unavoidable onslaught of images, tours and products related to the disaster that faced us as we made our way through the neighborhood. It seemed 9/11 Inc. was in full effect, serving as a tribute to both the long memories of Americans when we are done wrong and the entrepreneurship that drives the national work ethic.

Naturally my son, who I hadn’t briefed in advance about our route, was curious about all the hubbub.

“Remember when we talked about the people who flew the airplanes into the buildings in New York?” I said. “Well, this is where those buildings were.”

He was quiet as we moved quickly downtown, and through the remainder of the trip the topic didn’t come up again.

A few weeks later, the news broke of Osama bin Laden’s death and again the topic arose. I explained to him that bin Laden had been the man who planned the attacks on the buildings in New York. Without me expressing anything at the news other than, “Wow,” he surmised that the terrorist leader’s death at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs was a good thing.

Talking further, he probed for more details. How did he die? He was shot by a soldier, I explained. Would we ever know who shot him? Probably not, and it was unlikely we would ever see the soldier get a medal or award for his deed, I said, because his work was so secret that it would be dangerous for anyone to know who he is.

For a boy obsessed with the Toys R Us version of espionage, it was an opportunity for him to see how the work of grown-up spies and secret agents played out in the real world.

Over the next week, the nearly non-stop news coverage prompted us to discuss the issue further - honestly more than I ever thought I would be chatting about international terrorism with a first-grader. Though I was as excited as anyone that such a looming menace no longer walked among us, I did my best not to revert to the overt glee displayed by many who cheered bin Laden’s death.

But if there’s anything a first-grade boy possesses, it’s a finely honed sense of justice. There is fair and there is unfair, and the two are mutually exclusive of each other. Notions of “good” and “bad” are starkly rendered in black and white - good people should be rewarded; bullies are bad and should be punished.

But it was especially eye-opening to me to realize that my young son, who I had thus far jealously tried to protect from the events of 9/11 and the full capacity for human evil, could so easily and calmly grasp that even though hurting others was wrong, the death of bin Laden was something that was justified. There was no gray area that could offer an explanation for his deeds, only the fact that he did something terrible and got what was coming to him.

So in spite of how we celebrated bin Laden’s demise or didn’t, our inner first-graders know deep down that the terror leader was the worst kind of bully and that at long last, he got what he deserved.

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Putting the Fairy Tale to Rest

So, where will you be at 3 a.m. Friday morning? Unlike many anglophiles and self-styled "royal watchers," I'll be in bed, sleeping soundly and enjoying that fact that I'm in no way motivated to get up at the butt-crack of dawn to watch a wedding - no matter whose it is - on TV.

Never mind that the wedding in question is that of Prince William of the House of Windsor and commoner Kate Middleton. Never mind that I've been force-fed the significance of the event from every chattering, well-manicured TV talking head across the cable and broadcast spectrum. And never mind that I have a daughter who could be learning a valuable lesson about life from this once-in-a-lifetime event.

Forget for a moment that the girl is only 3. And forget also that I generally regard the British royal family as an inbred, out-of-date, out-of-touch and generally unproductive segment of society not worthy of all the attention it receives.

Indeed, the important thing to remember on this blessed occasion is that this will be the royal wedding that finally takes all those soft-focus, Disney-fied myths about princes and princesses and mercifully shoots them in the head.

My daughter recently decided she was a huge fan of Disney's "Snow White," which dismayed me a little because it's perhaps the worst example of the "some day my prince will come" mentality. It plants in little girls' heads that they should be swept off their feet by a man who appears magically, who rescues them from all danger and dispair, and who then takes care of them in a weirdly paternalistic way for the rest of their lives.

Even when this sort of situation was even a remote possibility in reality, it rarely ended in a simple "and they lived happily ever after." There are always problems and challenges in a marriage, and only a juvenile dim-bulb like Snow White, who seemed to gain all fulfillment from cooking, cleaning and chasing after grubby little miners, could accept such an arrangement.

The excellent modern-day example of how this metality fails is the marriage that we've been subjected to second most often in the discussions of Kate and William's nuptials - that of his father, Prince Charles, to the late Princess Diana.

In what was lauded as another fairy-tale romance, shy and virginal Diana - barely out of her teens - was plucked from relative obscurity to marry the stuffy and priggish Prince Charles, who despite being able to get plenty of princely action, apparently couldn't settle on anyone who was "appropriate" to one day sit by his side on the throne.

And so, in one of the most effective bits of marketing ever embarked upon, the royal family sold the marriage as one that was perfect. As we know now, it was most certainly not.

Charles harbored a flame for another and didn't hesitate to act on it. Diana spiralled into mental illness and adultery of her own. Her tragic death gave those who would idolize her an ever-beautiful martyr, and Charles the chance to finally be with the woman who he loved all along. In short, it was a nightmare and not fair to either spouse, nor the children born of the union (who were evidence that the unhappy couple had managed to consumate the marriage at least twice).

Now one of those kids is getting hitched himself, and despite what the TV keeps telling you, this is no fairy tale romance. In fact, it's a brilliant reflection of how non-royal behavior has influenced the business of royal coupling for the better.

While both Kate and Diana had their own jobs and their own money, Kate has worked for far longer and has lived as her own woman farther into her 20s. The happy couple has also dated on and off for nearly a decade.

This point is important because it illustrates that this relationship had time to evolve from early infatuation to a more mature, long-term mindset. It's also been stated (though not in excplicit terms) that the couple has shacked up for a while, which also gave them a taste of what marital cohabitation will be like.

In short, they've dated much like any other couple out there, royal or not. And that is no fairy tale. It's fraught with ups and downs, delights and drama. It's a perfect example of how the princess myth that hamstrings girls and women when it comes to their relationships with men is an utter failure and will only truly work on screen. Despite the Cindarella-story aspects of "Pretty Woman," don't ever believe that it never came up later in the marriage that the groom was a rich, self-absorbed prick and the bride was a prostitute.

So as I sleep soundly during the happy moment, I'll have wished the royal couple well and offered my hopes that among all the other challenges of being royal, being trapped by the myth of it all being a fairy tale won't be one of them.

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Mr. Spock's Baby and Child Care

Both Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner turned 80 last week. Both actors took what could have been cheesy roles in an even cheesier show and turned them into iconic characters in a modern-day mythology that's been quoted by everyone from the cast of Saturday Night Live to the Beastie Boys.

Part of that iconic nature came from the way each character handled conflict.

So as a parent (and lifelong Star Trek fan), who do I turn to when advising my son on dealing with his own conflicts - kids in his class demonstrating distinctly Klingon-like tendencies (and not the warm and fuzzy Worf kind, either)?

How about a generous helping of Spock with a dash of ass-kicking Kirk thrown in for good measure? After all, any sort of violence that takes place in a school will instantly fall under the draconian (and unfairly applied) "zero tolerance" policies. Basically, the last kid seen striking a blow in an altercation - frequently the victim - is marked as the instigator and punished. So Spock-like calm and lack of emotion might be the ticket.

But who among the first-grade punk-ass set really buys that air of calm as a deterrent? Spock's advantage was always three-fold. A) He had the ability to emotionally remove himself from the situation and not do something stupid (read: human). B) He still had some tasty self-defense skills honed in those crazy Vulcan mating rituals and could lay some serious hurt on nearly anyone with a simple clench of the neck. C) If it all really went to hell, he had hyper-emotional Kirk there to open an industrial-sized can of intergalactic whoop-ass on all comers, alien or otherwise.

So how do we fold those together? Well, the boy, for better or worse, has a sense of peace and calm that right now seems to rival both Gandhi and MLK. He is not easily provoked, and as school protocol dictates would prefer to alert a teacher or his parents when he has been done physically wrong. This is a good thing, as I'm all for non-violence.

But as with any parent, I hate to see harm come to my kids in any form, and so I counsel an additional line of defense that will keep him (hopefully) out of the principal's office. The boy takes martial arts, and is equipped with the basic skills needed to defend himself, so I recommend defensive blocks followed by a hasty retreat. He's got a sense of humor like his old man, so I suggest humor to defuse the situation. Otherwise, just stay way from the kids who are problems. All very Spock-like.

But what boils up inside me all too often lately is the urge to rally for a cosmic-scale Capt. Kirk-ian ass kicking. I hear about the latest bit of grade-school thuggery and I imagine the boy administering a quick elbow the the face of his antagonist, then feigning ignorance of how his assailant ended up a sobbing, blubbering mess with a bloody nose. Was it possible for Kirk to pummel a Romulan into wetting his pants? Occasionally, I'd like my boy to find out.

But the thing that holds us all back as parents is - do we want kids who barrel through the universe (or neighborhood, as it were) shattering the prime directive and emerging sweaty, a little bloodied and with a drooping forelock after laying out an alien lizard creature (or pesky classmate)?

I think not. So for now I'm continuing to counsel more Spock, less Kirk, in the hope that nobody provokes him into whipping out the first-grade equivalent of the Vulcan neck pinch. I simply can't imagine having to explain that one to the principal.

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A Legacy Lost, Another Gained

Upon the death last month of Frank Buckles, at 110 America's last living World War I veteran, I was reminded that unlike most members of my generation, I not only had the privilege of knowing a veteran of The Great War, but also was fortunate enough to have one as a grandparent.

Marion Brooks Williams, my maternal grandfather, died when I was 6 years old, giving me barely enough time to develop clear impressions of the man, let alone get to know him very well. He, too, was a World War I veteran, enlisting from his home in Kershaw County, S.C., and serving in the U.S. Navy.

Having that connection has always been valuable to me and has always spoken to the small contributions that members of my family have made to the armed services for nearly 200 years. A quick genealogical survey reveals that my maternal great-great grandfather, Creighton Williams, served in the War of 1812, enlisting at the age of 19 and receiving an honorable discharge a year later because he was underage.

On my father's side of the family, several family members served and lost their lives in combat during World War II, and it was that legacy and the influence of his father in law that pointed him toward Navy service before national sentiment had turned against the war in Vietnam.

His four-year hitch in the Navy was served aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Franklin D. Roosevelt, which saw its only combat in the Gulf of Tonkin with my father aboard working long shifts on the flight deck. Here's a quick summation of that mission from www.ussfranklindroosevelt.com:

"FDR’s sole opportunity to flex her muscles in combat came in the waters off Vietnam in 1966. Normally an Atlantic Fleet carrier, Franklin D. Roosevelt commenced launching her first strikes against enemy targets on 7 August, completing her final line period on 27 December. All told, she spent ninety-five days on the line launching combat missions, her embarked air wing losing seven aircraft to enemy fire and eight more in operational accidents."

Mr. Buckles' service in the Great War, as well as later in World War II, is well documented. That's partly due to his long life but also the result of his life being particularly colorful. We are fortunate that through his spoken and written accounts and his testimonies to Congress on behalf of World War I veterans we gained still more insight on what combat was like just after the turn of the 20th century.

As for my grandfather, I'm ashamed to say I know as much about his service as I've recounted above. To my knowledge, there are no written accounts of his service floating around in family documents, nor are we in possession of papers or official documents that might shed light on what his life in the Navy of 1917 was like. Truly, what remains is little more than a photograph of a young man in an archaic Navy uniform in whom I see a vague resemblance to myself and who I can recognize as the much older man I knew as a child.

In knowing little about his service, both I and my children suffer, as we are denied a little extra - and by extension, personal - perspective on one of the 20th century's pivotal conflicts.

My father, on the other hand, emboldened by age and the respect Vietnam-era veterans have earned over the intervening decades, has made it a point to recount details of his service to his grandson. By extension, I too benefit from this airing of old stories and once-private family history.

For me, it's a reminder that there have been harder, more tenuous times than now, during which the motivation to serve was strong, and that members of my family stepped forward with bravery and honor. For my son and daughter, it offers them perspective on a conflict that came long before they were born. And though I hope by the time the reach the ages at which they are eligible to serve in the military that need to serve will have been rendered moot by a prevailing peace, it's important for them to know that by their service, members of their family contributed in some small way to that peace taking hold.

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Freeing the Tiger

It must really suck to be Amy Chua.

Well, allow me to amend that. It must really suck to be Amy Chua until the royalty check arrives.

Ms. Chua is the author, if you haven't heard by now from lots of other livid blog posts, of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a memoir about how she applied the strict, Asian-style parenting she herself grew up with to raising her two very American daughters. Though her descriptions of her style of parenting sound pretty heavy handed (and a little shrill), by the end of the book she apparently relents in the face of her younger daughter's (inevitable) rebellion and pulls back a bit.

Full disclosure: I have not read the book - only a lot about it. For most (who probably have not read it, either), it was likely this essay from the Wall Street Journal that introduced them to Chua and her parenting philosophy.

From this essay and further interviews, like this one in the New York Times, Ms. Chua sounds like plenty of other parents I have known both as a kid and as a parent myself. I'll also note that from the WSJ piece, while her tactics seem on the harsh side, not all of her philosophies are disagreeable.

As a result of the WSJ and her book, Chua has received death threats - and lots of publicity, praise - and lots of publicity, and scorn - and even more publicity.


She shouldn't be surprised, because whenever you put yourself out there with something as private and personal as parenting, you can be guaranteed that lots of folks are going to have something to say in response. The part that sucks is that what many people are saying is that Chua is a really bad mom.

I personally have no experience with Asian style parenting other than what I have read about or dealt with by seeing its results in adults. Yes, it's a common stereotype that Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Korean students will always - always - beat the pants off Western kids in anything academic. And Chua embraces that stereotype in basically confirming that yes, Asian moms are badasses, brooking zero disobedience, caring not a whit for a child's preferences in activities or the precious Western value of "self-esteem."

In doing so, she hones in on what she perceives as the overwhelming weakness of the modern Western parent. We cave too much on TV and video games, don't emphasize academic achievement over all else, and are far too willing to allow children to "be their own people" at the expense of getting really good at the things that are required of them.

What upsets so many readers of her work is probably the fact that in a broad sense, she is right. I'm guilty myself of not being tough enough on many days, and in our moments of mutual exasperation over some kid fit of temper or disagreement, my wife and I have confessed to each other this concern.

Is it our American inclination towards democracy that makes us this way? Lord knows that living under the iron fist of various Asian dictatorships over a few thousand years has to trickle down to the home, and it's no surprise that our own bent toward self-determination has made its way into American parenting.

But even in applying the loose template of my own Southern upbringing - asking for a "yes" instead of a "yeah," when my own parents would have demanded it be followed by a "sir" or "ma'am" - I feel like I'm falling short some days. I wonder if I'm going to end up with brusque, backtalking children who answer with "WHAT!?" when they're called instead of the polite, respectful kids I know they can be.

But then I see other parents at the playground who are Silly Putty to their children's whims, who correct over-the-top misbehavior with a stammering Woody Allen-esque whine and a will like cold oatmeal, or simply ignore it as they gaze into the screens of their smartphones. Yet these same parents are shocked (pleasantly) when my kids display kindness to their playmates or respond to a question they didn't quite hear by saying, "Pardon me?" So deep down, I know my wife and I are doing something right.

In her writings, Chua brags about requiring her girls to play an instrument, as long as that instrument is piano or violin. She notes that whatever she asks her children to do (they are not required to choose any extracurricular activities), she demands that they be the best at it - no excuses. Failure (or even sub-par performance) is unacceptable.

With many American parents, it is true that mediocrity can become so acceptable that it ends up being the norm. Is there a reason to celebrate a B or a C on a report card? Shouldn't we always let kids know that we expect the best out of them? In her WSJ piece, she points out that many parents, seeing disappointing grades, will blame the teacher, the school or the curriculum rather than coming back to to the true culprit - the kid.

But Americans do know how to make demands on their kids. The only problem is much of that demand is limited to athletics. Our goal, if we want all American kids to compete on a global stage against the products of tiger mothers like Chua, is to reorient our focus and energy and add a uniquely American spin.

We should let our kids make limited choices (because where living in an Asian country has so often been about not having choices, that is what America is all about), but still demand excellence.

You want to play soccer? Fine, but no slacking, and as soon as your grades dip below a B, you're out. Asking for a drum set for Christmas? Great. You will take lessons and you will practice and you will rock out - no excuses. Slacking gets the set sold on Ebay. Entering the science fair? Fantastic. Shoot to win, not just participate - and no, a paper mache volcano is not an option.

It's probably not necessary to sit kids down for three-hour piano practice sessions with no water or bathroom breaks, as Chua describes doing. Nor is it necessary, as many American parents do, to constantly focus on the pursuit of Ivy League greatness at the expense of all else.

But it should be common practice that parents insist that in whatever they do, in wherever they seek from life, kids go out and kick ass.

And eventually, as Chua emphasizes, through persevering and eventually excelling, kids will realize their own strengths, achieve their own potential and be generally better adults.

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So, all this talk about hyper-achieving kids has me thinking about just one thing: Baljeet, the friend of Phineas and Ferb for whom no less than greatness is acceptable, and if he can't be graded on it (with an A, of course), he doesn't want to do it.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Baljeatles!

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The Difference Between Brown and Pink

With the passing of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday last week, there was a bit of a surprising milestone in our family: it was the first time I had ever heard my son use the word "black" in reference to someone's ethnicity.

To most folks, this wouldn't sound like a big deal. I'm not sure whether the fact that I'm even discussing this is a sign of how far we've all come or how far we have to go, but it threw me a little, and here's why: I don't use the words "black" and "white" to describe people to my kids.

And here's the kicker - I don't think you should, either.

So, you ask, is this out of some misplaced sense of political correctness, a Utopian fantasy of everyone sitting around, holding hands and singing "Kumbaya?" Is it white guilt held over from my childhood growing up in the South of the 1970s, where racial epithets were still an everyday occurrence? Well, the answer is no to the first and maybe a little to the second.

If anything, it comes down to the peculiarities of my life spent as a journalist - specifically as a copy editor, where the accuracy of the words we used in print was of the utmost importance, and nuances of terms could be discussed into the night long after deadline.

Honestly, I can go on here for hundreds of words about why the ethnic designations we use are completely bogus from the perspective of accurate language (and I originally intended to), but I won't.

Instead, I'll say that I avoid the words as ethnic designations simply because they are weighted too heavily with the baggage of history, of oppression, racism, prejudice and, honestly, easy, inaccurate generalizations.

You'll also notice I didn't say "racial designations" above. That's because I also dislike "race" as a term, for reasons any anthropologist will tell you - there is only one race of humans and it's homo sapiens. There are many ethnic and cultural subsets of humankind, but we all share the same basic DNA.

So how do my nearly 7-year-old and I discuss issues of ethnicity? It is as simple as this: Lots of people came from lots of different places, where they evolved to look different based on lots of factors. Our cultures are diverse, we observe various beliefs and traditions and speak different languages. Otherwise people are pretty similar, and we should treat them as such.

The roots of the civil rights movement, meanwhile, break down like this between my son and I:
People from Europe kidnapped people from Africa to be slaves because the Europeans (and later their American descendants) believed - incorrectly - that based on the color of their skin Africans were inferior and enslaving them was OK. Once the slaves were freed, the mistreatment continued until brave people like Martin Luther King Jr. and his contemporaries forced it to stop through peaceful protest.

But what about skin color, you ask? Can't you break it down that way?

Well, no, and here's why. Unless you establish in a child's mind that terms like "black" and "white" have meaning beyond the colors the represent on the visible spectrum, you throw them into utter confusion. Suddenly, skin tone carries a whole new - and occasionally inaccurate - meaning.

A great example is how during the civil rights movement discussions at my son's school, he assumed that a classmate of Indian decent - who does indeed have very dark skin - was "black." The same went for his classmates representative of other darker-skinned ethnicities who don't share an African heritage.

As for "white," its only bearing on ethnicity is to suggest that one's ancestors didn't originally come from an area where folks have darker skin. At one point, this was a big deal, because it was supposed to suggest dominance and superiority. Now, except for a few on the radical fringe, what does it really matter?

So instead of just saying "we're white," I prefer to talk about where and who we come from. Our ancestors long ago were European. Dad's came from England and Wales and Scotland, and Mom's came from Germany and Italy. It takes the discussion out of the realm of light skin vs. dark skin and puts it firmly into an appropriate context.

This also solves the old "what are you?" problem that seemed so pervasive among folks who grew up prior to the era of civil rights. Rather than breaking down everyone along some antebellum algorithm that calculates -nths of a degree of blackness of whiteness, it allows us to be very specific. We don't have to parse everyone down to the Jim Crow formulas of mulatto and octaroon or have that discussion on whether a friend of various ethnicities is really this or that. They are, like everyone, the sum of their many parts.

And the best part is that this approach frees us from the tyranny of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Those of us who were born in the last century still carry in the backs of our heads and in our hearts the dingy remnants of our grandparents' attitudes - their lingering suspicions, stereotypes and misunderstandings - that were and still are attached to the use of "black" and "white."

But my children, who were conceived and born in the 21st century, deserve more. They deserve an outlook that will carry them into a bold future where it's just a little easier for people to get along with each other - or they can at least choose to disagree over something else.

They deserve to be unshackled from that looming need to classify and immediately characterize those with whom they'll come into contact. They deserve instead, as I suspect Dr. King would have wanted, to see people as people - as children of God, nature or the universe, fallible and flawed, but not as colors or ethnicities bound up in what we think they should represent.

And should more people consider this approach and raise their children accordingly, then gradually the shades of our complexions will not just be overlooked, they simply won't matter.

Then, perhaps, we will all be free at last.


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A postscript regarding Dr. King - Last week PBS aired an episode of its excellent Pioneers of Television series featuring the groundbreaking science fiction programs of the 1960s.

One moment that was particularly poignant was Nichelle Nichols, who portrayed Lt. Uhura on Star Trek, recounting her personal audience with the civil rights leader just after she had decided to quit the show. Read the Web transcript here.

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Pretending We Did Nothing Wrong

You, my friend, are lucky to be alive.

Consider that if you're over the age of 35, you were subjected to life threatening dangers verging on child abuse from the moment you were born until you left your parents' house.

Not only did you think seatbelts were for sissies, chances are your parents smoked no less than three packs of cigarettes in the house, over breakfast, on the phone and in the car every day of your life. Your parents spanked or switched. You rode bikes and skateboards unencumbered by helmets, pads or general adult supervision. You ran loose in the woods, along neighborhood streets and generally lived a latchkey life in which an uncooked brick of Ramen noodles could be considered a valid snack and you did your homework accompanied by Three Stooges shorts and reruns of "Gilligan's Island."

You drove at 16, perhaps not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but certainly impaired by singing the chorus of "Pour Some Sugar on Me" or playing air drums along with "Tom Sawyer." You and your friends stole your parents' liquor, bought beer underage, smoked cigarettes and pot, dropped acid, felt each other up in the car and at the homecoming dance and probably had unsafe sex with people your parents would have considered unacceptable.

And yet you lived.

I point all this out not to be nostalgic or to somehow diminish the strides we've made as far as health, safety and parenting practice, but to remind parents not to freak out every time you hear about the next "dangerous teen fads."

 A posting from iVillage that a friend circulated on Facebook this week was a perfect example. In it, the writer warned parents in the shrill, hyper-vigilant style of local evening news reports of the myriad dangers our teens face from - wait for it - doing really stupid stuff.

The story goes on to detail what the latest batch of really stupid stuff entails - practices like vodka eyeballing, "rainbow parties" (I'll let you get the details on that yourself), and sexting.

Each item was couched in the same "We're shocked! Shocked, I say!" tone that usually accompanies any story about how horrified parents should be that their little angels are participating in anything so dangerous, seedy and crass.

What the writers failed to do was A) perform the least bit of journalistic vigilance into their piece; and B) put the latest stupid teen stuff into context with dangerous practices of the past or the present.

First, a little perspective. In each of the items featured in this piece, the sourcing is at best spotty and at worst completely anecdotal. Had I been their editor (and I have been an editor, so I know this kind of stuff) I would have happily handed the story back to the writers and said, "You need two things: real sources and real statistics." This story had few of either and consisted mostly of items cobbled together from other media accounts that were also poorly done.

For me, this sort of thing raises the same kind of red flags as those e-mails from deposed Nigerian royalty seeking help transferring money to the U.S. and from the freaky fringe types insisting that President Obama is the demon spawn of Joseph Stalin, Jane Fonda and Richard Roundtree from "Shaft." It immediately activates my highly sensitive bullshit detector, making me suspicious of nearly everything else the writers have to say.

Then there's the lack of context. I agree that pouring a shot of Grey Goose into one's eye isn't advisable under any circumstances (and is a waste of perfectly good vodka) , and yes, I'd be pretty disappointed to learn that my kid did it. I'd also be pretty mortified if I knew a child had participated in sexting or a rainbow party.

But if the definition of a "trend" is that more than two people have done it, then we're all guilty of participating in "dangerous teen trends." Think back on the things you did as a teen that you wouldn't even admit to your parents now that you're an adult. I can personally tick off several things I and my contemporaries did that would have, at the time, sent adults into spasms of outrage. They were stupid, dangerous and in many cases illegal (no names were mentioned, so relax, fellow members of the classes of 1982 through 1986).
 
But to go through what we (and likely every generation of teens) went through and then feign outrage at what is basically the same sort of behavior is the worst form of hypocrisy.

Instead, we should use our own experiences to inform how we raise our kids and warn them of real and very pervasive dangers: teen drinking and driving, use of prescription drugs for recreational purposes, easy access to legal firearms and getting knocked or fathering a child before they graduate from high school.

We should function not as helicopter parents who spend every waking moment thup-thupping above our kids making sure they are making the right decisions, but as adults who know the consequences of risky behaviors and can counsel teens on how to make the right decisions.

Then, when they have run the gantlet of their teen years and emerged relatively unscathed, they can also be amazed that they made it to the other side alive.

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Images Best Departed

October brought us a couple of notable obituaries. First, rest in peace, dear Barbara Billingsly, the actress who gamely portrayed June Cleaver, mother of the Beaver, for nearly six years on the TV sitcom Twilight Zone we know as "Leave it to Beaver."

Barbara, as an actress I'm sure playing June was at first just another gig that just happened to grow into an iconic representation of idealized Baby Boomer youth without your help. But, oh what that gig hath wrought. As if post-World War II women didn't have enough trouble, your character came along in this time of simmering suburban angst to remind women that they were expected to be perfect in all elements of their life all the time.

No doubt, several generations of psychotherapy practices were able to pad their billings with the worries of women who felt like they would simply never live up to the insane standards represented by the matriarch of the Cleaver clan.

As the husband of a strong, smart, capable and beautiful wife, I'm delighted that she was never burdened with the insanity that was the June Cleaver ideal. As with any woman who holds down a full-time job and also has children, she naturally has her moments of worry over how her time is divided up. But as unrealistic ideals of motherhood go, she faces nothing like the guilt potentially wrought by not being able to go through a day of cooking, cleaning, child-rearing while wearing fashionable outfits, sporting immaculate hair and a flawless pearl necklace.

The other notable demise came in the form of the long-running comic strip "Cathy." As a guy, my primary response to just about every panel of "Cathy" has been, "Please, Lord, don't let this be the way women really think." And after 42 years on this earth, I do realize that that "Cathy" represents some small shred of accuracy as far as conveying the workings of the female mind.

But, damn it, that doesn't make me like it any better, and it certainly won't make me miss the strip now that it's gone. As far as I'm concerned, that spot on the comics page will now be freed up after 34 years of hyper-whining about dieting and clothes shopping to include A) a fresh new comic voice, and B) perhaps a funnier and less pathetic representation of the female psyche.

I'm thankful on behalf of my children, too. My daughter won't be traveling through life with the "Cathy" stereotype of the attractive-but-secretly-psychotic woman hung around her neck and will be free to create her own female reality that may include work and marriage, but isn't obsessively focused on both.

My son, meanwhile, won't be faced with daily printed reinforcement of the suspicion that all women are crazy and focused on little more than dieting, acquiring the next piece of chocolate and roping a man into a long-term commitment.

And we all will be free to further explore the possibilities of the truly funny, such as this appropriate farewell to the strip from a fellow artist on the comics page.

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Rich Dad, Sick Dad

It’s long been a family joke that I always – always – get sick on vacation.

I’d like to be the one to say this is a myth that’s grown out of just a few isolated incidents, but I can’t. It’s true, and I fear it will always be true. I leave the day-to-day stresses of life and am allowed one precious week of worrying about little more than what to read, eat and drink, and my immune system collapses like a bridge built of dominoes and chewing gum.

My friend Chris chalks it up to a variant on the fight-or-flight reflex. During “real” life, he theorizes, we force our immune systems to ramp up their work out of sheer necessity. We just don’t have time to be sick, so we spend a lot of energy fighting off whatever is around.

When that pressure to stay healthy goes away, he suggests, our bodies feel free to pull back, too. Thus the sudden vacation case of strep throat, upper bronchial infection or – hell, for all I know next year it might be Ebola, bleeding eye sockets and all.

But there’s only one previous occasion that I can recall feeling sick enough to stay in bed. It was when The Boy was an infant, and I had that scratchy throat feeling as we departed for North Carolina’s Outer Banks. By day three, I had lesions blossoming in my throat and was laid out in a dark room sipping on ginger ale and hoping to god I’d be able to hit the beach for just a moment before the trip was over.

This year’s incident I fought not with antibiotics or comfort food, but with one of the greatest parental weapons available – sheer, unadulterated denial.

I might not be feeling well, I would say to myself each morning that I felt like warmed over seagull droppings, but I’m at the beach, dammit, and will not let this ruin things for myself, my wife or my kids.

So while Miss K had to deal with her share of husbandly whining, I honestly strove to keep it to a minimum. And as far as the kids knew, everything was mostly fine. “Just feeling a tad puny, son, and yes, I’d love to go throw the Frisbee with you. Just promise to call Mommy if Daddy collapses in the sand, OK?”

What’s particularly interesting is that my aunt’s daily questions about how I was feeling, which under other circumstances I might find grating, became part of that daily affirmation of fortitude.

“Are you still sick?” she’d sincerely query.

“I am moving forward with my day,” I’d reply without spite or irony while I downed a handful of Advil, noting mentally that I had no real choice, and honestly wouldn’t prefer the option of lying abed while precious moments of work- and worry-free time slipped away for another year.

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What Are You?

Like lots of people of a certain age, my maternal grandmother was always interested - perhaps a little too interested - in what people were.

As in, "What are you?" If you weren't immediately identifiable as of Anglo-Saxon or African descent, she wanted to know the details of your ethnic heritage. She spent much of her life as a substitute teacher, often at my elementary school, and I recall her once expending unusual effort explaining to me why one of our school's teachers - even though she had comparatively light skin - was black.

In retrospect, given the designations we've historically applied to people in this country, I suppose the teacher was indeed of African descent. But that moment, at such a young age, made me begin to wonder why those designations mattered so very much.

Eventually, I faced the same sorts of questions from fellow adults who seemed hyper-interested in ethnicity. Folks from predominantly Italian neighborhoods would take it for granted that I, with my ruddy cheeks and pale skin, was Irish.

My response was usually a good-natured version of, "Well, chances are someone was Irish way back there." If pushed, I'd note that I more closely identify myself with being Southern American, with an emphasis on the American. If pushed again, I'd note that any identification with the "old country" evaporated about 300 years ago with the first members of my family came ashore on this continent.

But it's Independence Day weekend, and at this time more than any, that we who share the blessings of the grand experiment wrought by our nation's founders should look at this nation as a delightful, coherent whole. Rather than looking back across borders or oceans to acknowledge where we came from, we should all take this time to relish where we are now and what our futures hold among these 50 states.

"Melting pot" has always been a nice term for what we have here in the United States, but that's always made me think more of fondue than national togetherness. Truly, we are more of a gumbo. The varied spices and ingredients we all bring from our various backgrounds and experiences combine to create a piquant stew, with portions retaining their original state but irrevocably influenced by the other ingredients.

As a dad, I always do my very best to not burden my children the ancestral hang-ups that could have been passed on to me. People are not designated by their appearance or ethnicity (perceived or otherwise). They are simply people, all deserving of equal respect and kindness. If you happen to find out details of someone's background, great. Share the same information with them, and you'll both have more insight into what makes you who you are.

This Fourth of July, I'll be reminding my kids that no matter what we look like, where we're from and how recently we arrived here, we are all Americans, striving to make our way through challenging times while remaining true to those we care for the most. We are children of the founders' dream that all are created equal. We strive to carry on and improve upon that dream every day through the way we carry ourselves and treat others.

That, if anyone asks, is what we are.

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A Swift Kick

The Boy began his first karate class tonight, and I highly suspect it's the only way I'll ever be able to con him into using the honorifics of "sir" and "ma'am."

His mother and I agreed before he was born that I wouldn't hammer the sir and ma'am thing into him like it was hammered into me. Born and (mostly) raised in the South, I was conditioned from the moment I breathed the air of the delivery room to treat every adult with respect. And with that respect came the sirs and ma'ams.

The habit was seriously called into question after my family moved to the Northeast when I was 11. Suddenly, I was in a world where children could say "yeh" and "nah" to their parents and not get a grounding (or worse) for their trouble. Stranger still, in this world the adults did not expect the more respectful form of address. In fact, they resented it. If anything about the move felt like walking into the The Twilight Zone, that did.

For me, the lessons stuck. At 41, I'm still likely to refer to anyone I perceive as older than me by 15 years by the honorific. I'm waiting for that moment when the Boy has a teacher who's younger than me, and I end up responding to him by saying, "yes, sir," only out of habit.

As a compromise between my upbringing and our current location, I have settled with emphasizing the full words "yes" and "no" with my children, if only to preserve some element of - I don't know - basic respect in their language. If you're going to respond to someone and you can't say sir or ma'am, my logic goes, at least you can do them the courtesy of fully pronouncing the words you mean to say.

Now that karate has begun, however, things are going to change. As in most dojos, the Boy's instructor maintains a certain level of discipline with his young charges. At his first lesson today, it seems my offspring was politely reminded on several occasions that "OK" wasn't going to cut it in response to directions.

Whether this will carry over into the home, I can't say, and I seriously doubt it will ever seep into use in school. But if it happens to crop up here and there when he's addressing his grandparents or great-grandfather (all of whom I still reflexively refer to the old fashioned way), I can't say that I'll really be disappointed.

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The Princess-Industrial Complex

The Girl turned two not long ago, and it seems like it took exactly a millisecond thereafter for her to gaze upon her first Disney Princess product and utter an enthusiastic "Ooooohhh."

It was a moment that I knew was on its way, just like that moment when The Boy, at about the same age, picked up a stick and decided to pretend it was a gun. Somewhere in the higher-functioning parts of our primate brains is a synapse that kicks in and makes boys embrace gun play and girls long for tulle and tiaras.

Generally, I'm cool with this inclination on either side. What unnerves me is when it spills into generally violent behavior for boys and uncontrolled princess worship on the other.

The Mouse, always on the outlook for the next thing to bolster the brand, has in turn taken the marketing of its "princesses" (defined as any lead female in an animated feature - regardless of whether she was indeed royalty) to girls as young as mine.

Take, for instance, her Disney Princess Phone. It's a toy phone that features a borderline creepy female voice that addresses the kid as "little princess." Activities include calling the flower shop, candy shop, and finding numbers for said merchants.

This bugs me for several reasons. First, toys produced by a giant, multi-tentacled corporation don't need to encourage more consumerism, especially when it comes to little girls, who are going to be urged to consume just fine from plenty of other sources.

Second, I love my daughter, but I resent her being referred to as a "little princess." In my mind, any member of royalty is participating in an outdated, genetically suspect institution that created itself on the backs of billions of the less fortunate and couldn't be undone soon enough.

Third, the whole Disney concept of the princess seems to involve this: a completely downtrodden and oppressed girl/woman strives to get out of her bad spot and has success only after a "Prince Charming" comes to rescue her in some fashion after which they marry and live happily ever after - OR - a spunky, can-do girl/woman gets herself and her true love out of a bad spot, after which they marry and live happily ever after.

You might be able to guess my particular problem with both of these scenarios - they both end in the alleged "happily ever after" and in no way hint at some very adult realities of life and relationships. Those include (but aren't limited to) the potential for "Prince Charming" to be a complete tool and the fact that marriage doesn't automatically mean happily ever after.

As a guy, I know that some of the dudes who seem most perfect to some women are in fact the biggest phonies, scam artists, philanderers and ne'er to wells. As a married man, I understand that marriage can indeed bring a lifetime of happiness, but that it doesn't automatically begin at the moment the vows are completed.

So, dear daughter, I say to you, "Don't believe the princess hype." Instead, I will happily read to you your current favorite book and one I am happy to share with you as frequently as I can: "The Paper Bag Princess," in which Princess Elizabeth, upon saving snooty and unappreciative Prince Ronald from a dragon, declares, "You look like a prince, but you are a bum."

That's the way to tell 'em, sweetie.

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Update to Earlier Post - EW!

So, apparently things could get worse for Mackenzie Phillips than shooting up with her dad. Ick.

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The Annals of Crappy Fatherhood - Rock 'n Roll Edition

Those of us old enough to remember Mackenzie Phillips on "One Day at a Time" have known for a long time that she was a long series of really bad messes. But in advance of her new tell-all book, she's revealing just how messed up her childhood really was.

Apparently her dad, John (one of the four founding members of the Mamas and the Papas), helped her along by administering her first mainline dose of cocaine, the story goes. It's pretty well known that John Phillips was into drugs in a substantial way, but then who among the rockers of the late 1960s wasn't?

The difference, I suppose, is that John felt the "freedom" he and his contemporaries were pursuing included providing minors with addictive mind-expanding chemicals. Apparently there were also a few illicit sexual encounters with various Rolling Stones thrown in there for good measure. Naturally, the adult (and for the most part unemployable Mackenzie) now seems to make most of her money off "One Day" syndication residuals and tell-all memoirs.

First, I have to say that parents putting their kids in the midst of their own bad behavior isn't necessarily a new thing. Plenty of parents still smoke around their kids, blowing toxins into the air for everyone to breathe.

Others insist on being the "cool" parents by providing their teens with beer and booze at locked-down sleepover parties that they feel are safer than letting the kids get lit without supervision.

So where's the line between filling the air with poison, handing your 17-year-old and his/her friends a beer (after confiscating the car keys first, mind you) and helping your kid mainline coke?

John Phillips died in 2001, so he's not here to defend himself. But I highly suspect that in his own mind, he might have been functioning as the self-described "cool" parent himself. Unfortunately all he did was create an ongoing car crash of a life.

To get all psychological about it, it's a pretty safe bet that drug use was inextricably linked in her mind with parental love, and whatever therapies or rehab treatments she pursued had to get past that single fact.

Parents who smoke, the message seems to be that wanton disregard for common courtesy, one's health and the health of others is not such a big deal. For the parents who think they're sending a message of safety by hosting drinking parties for their teens, they're instead telegraphing that binge drinking is so OK that even Mom and Dad endorse it. John Phillips - well, who the hell really knows what he was thinking. He may be in the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame, but likely received no votes for such an honor as a dad.

As parents, we're going to make mistakes. But it seems to me that our job is to try as hard as we possibly can to ensure that the mistakes are just those - unavoidable errors unmarred by malice or sheer stupidity.

We have to make a conscious effort to ingrain the right ideals in our kids - encouraging them to make good decisions and avoid self-destructive behavior - rather than making it more convenient for them to do dumb stuff. They'll do dumb stuff all on their own, but without Mom and Dad helping them a long by setting lousy examples, maybe it won't be as dumb as it could be.

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