Caffeine Self Defense

At the nearby Starbucks, across from the middle school, at certain times of the day – every morning before class and when school is out in the afternoon – the lines of young people waiting to order coffee are out the door.

Backpacks on and cell phones engaged, clumps of them are pushing and joking around and ordering like world-weary veterans of coffee houses.  Some of these kids are small – as is often the case in middle school where that first year it’s tough to tell the 8th graders from the fifth and sixth graders they recently were.  They grow at different rates, so we have some girls dressed like The Pussycat Dolls and others dressed in oversize playclothes.   And I give up trying to guess the ages of the boys.  Some are six feet tall and the voice hasn’t changed. 

 Next door is a juice/smoothie emporium which doesn’t have nearly as many customers. 

I’m in line wondering where they get the money for custom coffee every day?  Do the same people who bought them their iPods and cell phones and PDA’s know they’re here at Starbucks before 8 A.M. ordering complicated coffee drinks like experts? 

Do parents drop them off at school and then the kids sneak over here?  Or is everyone aware – both parents and  school employees – that this time before school starts is loaded with potential pitfalls?

How about after school?  Why are they spending hours in and around a coffee shop?  Aren’t they expected home?  They fill the coffee shop and the plaza in front every day, and they’re all holding drinks.  

Current wisdom says  caffeine can be beneficial for some, when consumed in moderation.  Alternate current wisdom says caffeine is  bad, bad, bad for kids. 

Age-old wisdom says that kids who are ingesting stimulants before and after school may be altering their abilities (or maybe just their desire?) to do whatever the heck else they’re supposed to be doing.

I don’t envy the teacher facing this group in school.  But wait  – here comes a teacher to join the line.  He’s obviously a favorite.  All the kids let him cut in.  Then they cluster around him to sip and chat.  

But then he’d have to be a coffee drinker, wouldn’t he, just to keep up?  If the best defense is an offense, then this teacher’s best offense is  – who will spell it for us today?   That’s right.  C-a-f-f-e-i-n-e.  

Ó Anita Garner 2009

Who’s Using A BlackBerry?

That’s not the real question, of course.  We know lots of people who use BlackBerries, including President Obama, and we’ll probably learn during the  wall-to-wall inauguration coverage whether he’ll get to keep his, what with all the security concerns.

Switching from a regular cell phone to a BlackBerry is a big decision for me.  Could a BlackBerry be my new tiny dream machine?  Here’s what I hope it’ll do:  Handle most of my communications needs while I travel a lot this year.

I don’t love my clunky old laptop and in a hotel I use it mostly for emailing and looking up addresses on the Internet.  I’m told a BlackBerry can handle these duties and then some.  If I get a BlackBerry, is there a model with a screen big enough so I can actually read the Internet display?

Texting is another quandary. I’m not a texter, but might be if I can actually find the letters of the alphabet.  Since a BlackBerry has a keyboard, that might just do it. 

The dilemma is – which model to get and how much do I need to spend to get the features needed?

I hope to avoid buyer’s regret – or future BlackBerry lust –  by knowing which features I’ll wish I had, if only I’d paid for them at the start. 

Help me please.  I’m suffering from BlackBerry-Indecision-Paralysis.

Ó Anita Garner 2009

Naturally Curly

“She has naturally curly hair,” my mother would say with great sadness in her voice  when she spied a young person with curls.  She made it sound like a curse.   Mother had curls of the type that sprang in tight spirals directly from the scalp and she hated them.   She did battle with her hair daily.  Her own mother urged her to wear her hair cropped short and just be done with the whole thing, but mother craved shoulder-grazing styles.  

She was born at the wrong time for her hairstyle to be considered stylish.  The only curls my mother’s mother wanted to see were the tiny half moons that women plastered to their foreheads while the rest of the hair was smoothed into a bob.  Those little spitcurls in front my grandma called “beau catchers” and they were meant to lay there dutifully and not pop right back up like mother’s did.  

Mother was a performer and hours before every appearance  she could be found fighting to hold down her fluffy hair with Vaseline or other goop.  She was often in tears as we traveled through the humidity of the deep south.

During my high school years, once again, naturally curly became an epithet.  A yearbook reveals row upon row of girls with hair freshly flattened (ironed) and plastered as close to the head as possible.

“Naturally curly” was a good thing again years later, “natural” I guess,  being the blessing, instead of the perms we felt we had to get in the 70’s in order to make our hair big and frizzy.  We carried picks in our purses instead of combs or brushes, in a futile attempt to simulate huge Afros.

My granddaughter has naturally curly hair.  It’s not like her great-grandmother’s.  This little girl’s hair starts out silky and then waves and curls at the end.  Instead of stopping in tight spirals just above the shoulders, the way mother’s did, the little one’s hair comes nearly to her waist.   The four year old loves her curls.  She treats her hair like a dear companion.   There’s the occasional griping about sitting in the tub while her mommy conditions it, but overall, she likes and accepts her hair just the way it is.

We clip it back  so the hair doesn’t fall into her cereal, and she removes the clips and expertly tucks the hair behind her small ears.  She’s in control of her own crowning glory.   For school we put it up high in ponytails because there’s so much hair we fear she’ll get caught up in playground equipment.  But negotiation is required – about what color the ponytail holders and clips will be and how long they must stay in.

It’s good to see a little girl with no negative hair issues.  In fact, so far we see no appearance issues of any kind.  One day she wants to wear jeans and a tee shirt with a picture of construction equipment on the front, and tiny black “biker” boots.  Another day it’s a dress over leggings and princess shoes.  But always she prefers her hair floating free.

Curls are all around me these days.  Women of a certain age are sporting silver and white ringlets.  Some are worn short and bouncy while others are wild and long.  All are beautiful. 

There are whole books and plays and intellectual treatises about the significance of hairstyles through the ages, and what each one means.  Women have come a long way thank goodness, and the way we’re choosing for ourselves how to wear our hair (without my mother’s tears)  is another way we can see our progress.

Ó Anita Garner 2009

Can We Save Lipstick Jungle?

There’s talk of canceling Lipstick Jungle. Please let’s keep it.  It’s one of the few shows I’m committed to.  I don’t feel a bond with legal shows and police shows and dark prison shows and killing shows and medical shows.  I only invest in relationship shows. 

 

I sit down with my coffee and remote and turn on that dvr and I’m transported into the latest goings-on within the group I’ve chosen to care about.

Lipstick Jungle is fun.  It’s as good as Sex And The City – maybe better. These women are grownups.  They achieve and then they stumble. They have their triumphs, some on a grand scale.  And then they have some of the same problems as – well – mostly nobody else I know has the same problems as these three women. 

One of the three main characters is a parent.  This parenting is done in a gorgeous loft in NYC.  Another wants to parent but can’t yet.  And, to put this all into perspective, one is dating a handsome billionaire. So – maybe there’s no common ground and maybe that’s why it’s fun.  

They look good.  Really good.  The show is beautiful to look at and yes, it does look expensive, but where’s the problem?  We don’t expect television shows to come cheap.  Entertainment should sometimes be lush and well-dressed.  I’ve had enough gritty.  Surely NBC can figure out how to cut corners somewhere else and spare this one.   

Lipstick Jungle is made for looking through the window at someone else’s life and choosing the parts we’d like to have and the parts we wouldn’t want. The best part about the show is the friendship.  These three ladies love each other.  They disagree and then they make up.  Most importantly, they show up for each other. 

I’m having trouble finding another relationship show to bond with, so please NBC, let’s bring Lipstick Jungle back for another season. 

Ó Anita Garner 2008