What We Should (and Will) Be Embarrassed By...

Introduction

Have you ever been sent a link to a New York Times article, and you click it, and it starts to show you the story but then pops up a paywall saying you’ve reached your limit of  free articles? And it’s infuriating because you haven’t seen a free article in like four years? So your limit of free articles is apparently zero? Well, I have a solution but you’re not going to like it: just cough up a bunch of money and subscribe to the Times … which I now do.

Well, at least there’s some good stuff in there. I read a fun column titled “Future Cringe: Things We’ll Regret About the Present,” for which they invited a few dozen guests from academia, media, and business—as well as a guest AI “writer”—to weigh in. With this post, I weigh in as well.

Why bother? Well, some of the responses were spot-on, such as how we’ll one day be embarrassed at having overused the word “journey” metaphorically, and at how we did too much with CGI in movies, and how we were generally reckless with our privacy online. But some of the other notions were off-base, like suggesting we’ll be embarrassed about ever having observed daylight saving time (which is in fact a highly useful convention), or about having worn “beanies and workwear because no one’s working and no one’s that cold” (contributed by a young woman who clearly doesn’t know how cold a balding middle-aged man’s head can get, and is apparently unaware that unemployment is at its lowest rate since 1969). And there’s the poet who wrote “It’s cringe not to have a New York Public Library card in 2023” (i.e., she evidently doesn’t realize most American’s aren’t eligible for this card). So I see room for improvement here. I’ll share my observations, starting, ironically enough, with a few cringe-worthy expressions the Times article’s contributors used.

(Is it okay for me to steal the Times’ concept here? Sure! First of all, they’re not the only ones to have this idea. Second, at least I’m crediting them with the prompt. They may have ripped me off, without crediting me, in their recent article about prepping for a colonoscopy. They suggested mixing the laxative drink mix with a Top Ramen flavor packet … a wacky idea I posted three years ago here. The only difference is I was obviously joking…)

Terms from the column that made me cringe

The phrase “cancel culture” appeared three times in the article. I’m already tired of this phrase, and even the word “cancel” in this context. There’s nothing that new about publicly shaming people; offenders used to be put in stocks. Our generation thinks “cancel culture” sounds clever but it isn’t. We’ll all realize this one day.

Cringe as an adjective: this came up three times too, with the person who said “it’s cringe not to have an NYC library card,” and another saying “professional clothing is … going to be so cringe” and “saying L.G.B.T.Q. is going to become so cringe.” At least the Times, in their introduction, used “cringe” correctly as a verb … why are so many people pretending it’s an adjective?

YOLO: I can’t believe a contributor used this acronym, especially in a column on current cultural trends that won’t stand the test of time. As I described here, the term “YOLO” was embarrassingly passé ten years ago.

My list of what we’ll someday cringe at

For one thing, I’m really tired of the phrase “lean in.” It’s just not that meaningful, and it’s become really trite and arguably patronizing. More than four years ago the Washington Post declared “the end of leaning in” in this article, which challenged Sheryl Sandberg’s overall message to women. The article also noted how, as even the president of LeanIn.org acknowledged, “the phrase ‘lean in’ has been used to mean many things — some of them very far from what Sheryl intended.” And yet I still hear “lean in” all the time. There are muscles in my face that are sore from all the eye-rolling.

Another thing I predict we’ll look back at with embarrassment is the promotion of cannabis like it’s some kind of healthy, holistic, responsible way to self-medicate for anxiety and other ailments. Bay Area freeways are studded with billboards promoting weed like it’s the next big “wellness” thing, like meditation or yoga or “just taking care of yourself.” I sincerely hope future generations return to seeing pot for what it is: a hedonistic drug that dudes like Jeff Spicoli use because they’re young and irresponsible and like to party. Marijuana is not part of a sensible adult lifestyle just because a growing number of states have been foolish enough to legalize it.

Perhaps hand-in-hand with the cannabis lifestyle is all this home food delivery: Uber Eats, Grubhub, DoorDash, etc. Isn’t it bad enough getting takeout because we’re too lazy to cook? Now people are so freaking lazy they can’t even run a 10-minute errand to pick up their food? Is it that their sweatpants are so grubby they’re afraid to be seen in public? Or they can’t find their shoes? Or maybe food delivery is all about catering to people who are too drunk or high to drive? Whatever the case, I find this trend depressing and hope somebody someday asks, “Why did everyone get so lazy back in the ‘20s?”

Moving right along, I really hope we eventually look back and shudder at how we parents have bullied our children into filling up all their time with organized activities designed to look good on college applications. As described here, one silver lining of the COVID pandemic, for my younger daughter, was that with so many formal activities suspended, she finally got to just hang out with her friends, whose schedules had historically been booked solid. Does it need to take a pandemic to free up these poor kids’ afternoons?

In a similar vein, perhaps we’ll one day regret, with a pang, pushing so many kids into STEM. As I’ve explored at length here, much of the hype around tech—and the antipathy toward more traditional fields—is inaccurate. STEM grads don’t earn considerably more money, and a study conducted by the United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics found that tech doesn’t actually employ more of the workforce than it did 20 years ago, and its share of the job market isn’t expected to significantly grow.

On a lighter note, perhaps Americans will eventually wince at the silliness of how automakers market their vehicles, with brands nested inside brands, e.g., AMC Jeep Cherokee Renegade Sport Unlimited. Do we humans really respond to that? Like, I’m supposed to feel better about my truck because it’s the Sport edition? Or the Unlimited? What does Unlimited even mean here? If my Jeep Cherokee is also a Renegade, does that make me even cooler?

Vitamin water has got to go. The idea that people are vitamin deficient is arguably bogus, whereas drinking one’s calories is an unequivocally bad idea and a huge part of our obesity crisis. At least if we renamed it “Stupid Water” people might not have to ask later, “What the hell were we thinking?”

Another behavior we’ll probably cringe at in retrospect is this trend of grown men and women zipping around on electric Razor scooters. Come on, people. Have some dignity.

Now, as I’ve argued before in these pages, anyone who uses a Keurig ought to be ashamed of himself. What a joke those things are. I hope everyone grasps that eventually, and the Keurig goes the way of those Space Food Sticks from the ‘70s.

Now, the next cultural circumstance I’ll mention isn’t exactly ubiquitous, but it does crop up from time to time: people who apparently cannot conceive of the reality that not everyone uses an iPhone. Someone will tell me, “Just get it from the App Store,” and I’ll say, “Is there an Android version?” and then I just get this blank stare of disbelief, as though I’d just said, “I don’t actually have any sex organs.” 

Speaking of tech, this brings me to my final prediction/hope: that one day we will be duly embarrassed by our current infatuation with A.I. It’s become impossible to look at a newspaper or magazine, or even have a conversation, without somebody raving about the latest, greatest A.I., particularly (as of this week) CHATGPT. In fact, one of the contributors to the Times article about future cringe was the CHATGPT chatbot, which wrote:

Overreliance on technology: Our overdependence on smartphones, social media and other digital devices will likely look outdated in a few years as new technologies emerge.

Man, this is just classic A.I. bullshit. At first glance, it seems impressive that it’s a fairly legit sentence, grammatically, and is pretty much on topic. But the statement isn’t persuasive in the least. It begins to assert that we are overly dependent on digital technology, but then instead of supporting this idea it wanders off into a pointless generality about new technologies improving on old ones. I mean, what technology doesn’t look outdated when it’s replaced by something newer? Isn’t that exactly what it means to be outdated? The statement is tautological and conveys nothing of value. It doesn’t deserve to be quoted in the Times, and in general I’m still unimpressed by A.I’s writing “ability.” Of course, with A.I. we might get off easy if one day we just look back with embarrassment. A.I. could end up doing a lot more damage than vitamin water, Grubhub, and “lean in.”

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My Brief Foray into Politics

Introduction

This post does not concern, nor reveal, my political views.  As I stated in my very first albertnet post, politics is a topic I avoid.  Why?  First of all, I don’t have enough readers to risk alienating half of them.  Second, politics is boring.  I firmly believe that most political dialogue between non-professionals is pointless.  Either you disagree with the other person and will never come to agreement, or the two of you already agree, in which case the dialogue is just reiterating each other’s opinions (or splitting hairs, which doesn’t generally change anybody’s vote).  I’ve personally never met an undecided voter.  I acknowledge they exist but this amazes me.

This post tells the story of my brief foray into politics, a couple decades ago, as a Precinct Captain during a Presidential election.  This was when I was a student.  My college career happened to span two such elections, with a different party winning each time.  I reckon I can safely tell my story without you figuring out which side I support(ed).

(I thought this would be a recycled “from the archives” essay, but discovered that most of my original version emphasized the wrong things.  The fun, human details that stand out in memory were largely missing from the original essay.  So I’m recycling some stuff here, but dredging up the more interesting details from memory.  Here’s a teaser:  a girl was involved.) 

My brief foray into politics

It all started with a knock at the door from some guy handing out political paraphernalia.  He represented the candidate I supported, so—being bored, idealistic, and bereft of the “refusal skills” they tried to teach us in junior high health class—I coughed up my name and phone number as a potential volunteer.  A week later, the phone awakened me from a late slumber.  The caller was a girl and asked for me by name.  I’d only moved to town a couple months before and didn’t know a lot of people, so this seemed too good to be true.  Her name was Charlie.  If you don’t think that’s a sexy name for a college girl, maybe that’s only because you haven’t heard her voice.  If she’s not running a political campaign today, she might be making a great living as a deejay or voice actor.  She “reminded” me (actually, I’d been ignorant) about the big rally the next day.

I decided to go.  Not because I’m a natural-born volunteer, which I am not, and not because I was a politically wild-eyed college kid, and not because I was looking for something that would “look good on my résumé” (having the good sense even then to leave out this kind of thing).  After two decades of reflection, I’m able to admit that my main motivation for attending was to meet Charlie and see if she was as attractive in person as she’d sounded on the phone.

The student pavilion was absolutely mobbed.  After much trumpeting, ballyhooing, and a few introductory speeches, a big boss asked each volunteer to state his or her name, organization, and reason for attending.  This threatened to take forever; the first few students gave long tirades about their beliefs, etc.  Fortunately, a lot of others (perhaps sensing the growing danger of death-by-blather) gave very brief intros like, “My name is Joe Blow and I’m hung over” or “Her name is Jane Doe and she’s shy.”

When it came to my turn I said, “I’m Dana Albert and I’m here because I disagree with almost everything [Candidate X] stands for.”  This was met with cheering and laughing and I was on the verge of thinking I had a talent for politics until somebody said, “Wait—almost everything?”  I feared I might be pilloried but there was just more laughing.  Everybody seemed pretty punch-drunk, which may well be normal at such gatherings.

Then we got down to the strategy for Election Day.  Each precinct would have a Precinct Captain who would lead a team of “walkers” to blanket the region, knocking on doors to hand out paraphernalia and remind people to vote.  Every door in every precinct would be hit three times.  This sounded like a whole lot of work and I considered slipping out and running for my life.  Once you’ve demonstrated a willingness to do volunteer slave labor, I reasoned, you’re marked for life.

On the other hand, I theorized that being a Precinct Captain instead of just a foot soldier might involve some interesting work and a lot less walking.  Who knows, maybe I was a bit punch-drunk myself, because I bit the bullet and volunteered for Captain.  Just like that, my apartment became the headquarters for Precinct 34-11.

The Precinct Captains gathered at one end of the pavilion to head up the walker recruiting process.  The volunteer pool was surprisingly small, to my dismay.  What’s worse, the other Captains actually knew how to recruit:  “Yo, free beers for anyone in my precinct!” and  “Coffee and doughnuts over here!” Being broke, I wasn’t about to pony anything up, so I scanned the room for anybody who looked like he could be cajoled, via mere words, into joining my team.  My eyes happened to settle on a singularly attractive young woman, and I was so stunned when she returned my gaze that I just froze, cowering inwardly.  Only the fear of being rude kept me from instantly averting my eyes.  I probably looked like a scared little puppy dog who’s made a mess on the rug that his master is soon to discover.  But to my surprise, the girl didn’t scorn me; in fact, she walked over.  And astonishingly, she turned out to be Charlie herself!

Actually, this only seemed astonishing at the time, and if you happened to read my original account you’d have thought I was a master of dramatic irony (i.e., the literary technique where the reader figures things out that the hapless narrator does not).  But actually, I was just clueless.  Only now, in retrospect, do I realize that Charlie came over not because I was looking at her, but because I’d stood up and stated my name a few minutes before, so she knew who I was; i.e., she realized I was the hapless last-minute recruit she’d telephoned the previous day, who had now recklessly named himself a Precinct Captain despite lacking the knowledge and volunteer base to cover a precinct.  My puppy-dog look had only increased her pity.  Surely this is why she—a higher-up party operative—agreed to be one of my walkers, for at least part of my shift.

Unfortunately, it would take a lot more than one volunteer to blanket my precinct three times over.  I wasn’t the only understaffed Captain; one of the big bosses announced, “It looks like we're really short on volunteers, so the best thing you can do is call up your friends and get them to help you.”  I thought about raising my hand and saying, “What if I don’t have any friends?”  This would have been taken as a joke, and yet the reality was, the friendships I had made were still too new and shaky to withstand this kind of burden.

And so, later that afternoon, I went around to all the apartments in my complex with my signs and posters to beg for support.  Only one neighbor agreed to help, and he wouldn’t commit to a specific time, which made him as good as worthless.  Going into Election Day, I had to kiss goodbye my dream of assembling a crack team of precinct-walking superstars, ruling over them with friendly yet absolute authority, earning their respect as a fearless leader, and then kicking back all day and watching the votes roll in.  But things weren’t all bad; after all, I was Precinct Captain over one of the most beautiful girls on campus.

I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. on Election Day.  The first task of our crew was hanging last-minute campaign signs all over town.  It was hard to see the point of this; perhaps the idea was to put on a show of great effort in order to guilt lazy voters into actually making it to the polls.  Then it was time for the first door-to-door shift.  Charlie had her real job to do until 3:30 p.m., but I was able to coax the party bosses into assigning me a couple of professional walkers who had come all the way from Washington, DC.  Despite 34-11 being a notoriously large precinct, every door was knocked on by 11 a.m. and I did only 45 minutes of walking myself.

I spent the early afternoon calling in the poll results and handling a few other clerical matters.  I was dreading the second walking shift because I had no volunteers and would have to do the whole precinct myself.  But check this out:  the neighbor I’d recruited not only showed up, but brought his brother!  The three of us covered the second wave in good time, so that when Charlie showed up at 3:30 I was already back at HQ and probably looked like I knew what I was doing.

I had to walk a lot during the final shift, by which time people seemed pretty sick of seeing us.  Going door-to-door was actually kind of fun; seeing college kids at home is kind of like seeing animals in the wild.  A lot of them seemed to be napping, and it wasn’t uncommon for pot smoke to billow out as the door opened.  I knocked on one door, heard a lot of shrieking and scuffling, and eventually it opened a crack and a girl giggled, “None of us are dressed!”  At another place the tenant, who’d been sprawling on a couch half asleep, roused himself to start arguing with me.  I explained that I didn’t have time to discuss the election, at which point his girlfriend took up the job.  They were really going at it as I left.

At 8:15 I headed over to the mandatory meeting of all the Precinct Captains.  I guess if our candidate had triumphed this would have been a big party, and there was certainly enough alcohol laid in for that purpose.  But our guy lost.  The state of the headquarters (somebody’s house) reflected the wreckage of the campaign:  all kinds of flyers and other paraphernalia, now completely useless, littered the floor; posters were beginning to curl and slide down the walls; charts of the periodic precinct checks displayed the carnage numerically.  I imagined being one of the bosses recording these numbers, the cause being slowly tortured to death before their very eyes. 

I went into the living room, where everybody was gathered around watching our candidate’s concession speech.  I don’t think advance polling was much of a thing back then, so this loss hadn’t been predicted.  Still, I was surprised at how nobody seemed braced for this eventuality.  It was like somebody had died … everyone was so depressed.

Maybe nobody wanted to be the first to leave, because we all hung around for a good while, some people drinking pretty heavily.  Maybe all the guys were waiting for a chance to hit on Charlie, which to be honest was the main reason I myself stuck around.  It did seem a bit crass to be pursuing such a selfish personal ambition under the circumstances, but then, defying my hormones to pursue extended mourning wouldn’t change anything anyway.  Life goes on, right? 

I nursed a single beer for so long it became warm in my hand, and I must have zoned out for a good while.  When I did my next casual scan of the room to see what Charlie was up to, I was startled to discover two things.  One, almost everybody seemed to have vanished, as though they’d been quietly dismissed or spontaneously bailed en masse.  Two, Charlie was totally making out with some guy!

Dammit!  This disappointment oddly mirrored that of the election itself.  In both cases, I hadn’t really had my hopes up but was nonetheless shocked to see them so suddenly dashed.  And who was the lucky guy?  I didn’t recognize him as one of the leaders, and he wasn’t particularly good looking or even well-dressed.  What was his secret?  Confidence, probably.  Yeah, even with (or especially with) his face mashed into Charlie’s, he exuded charisma.  Well, good for him.  Hell, he’d probably been working on Charlie for the whole damn election … who was I to think I could swoop in at the end, coordinate some pointless door-to-door campaign activity on Election Day, and sweep this gorgeous and important young woman off her feet?

Adding insult to injury, I now had to figure how to make a graceful exit.  Sneaking away seemed cowardly and antisocial.  But I couldn’t just tap Charlie on the shoulder to bid her farewell.  What would I say?  “Excuse me, sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to say goodbye and thanks for … everything.”  And what would I say to the guy?  Offer him my congratulations?  It was all just so awkward. 

But then all the empty beer cans and bottles littering the place gave me an idea.  I was seated at a table and kind of slumped over it for a spell.  Then I let out a little groan and slowly pitched myself out of my chair, slipping down off the table and sprawling out on the floor.  To complete the illusion of being passed out drunk, I let my beer bottle slip from my hand and roll a short way across the floor.  I remained as still as possible, eyes slitted.

Charlie’s new boyfriend chuckled and said, “Looks like somebody’s overdone it.”  He and Charlie walked over and helped me to my feet.  I staggered and slurred as they walked me—my arms around their shoulders—to the door.  “You gonna be okay, buddy?” the guy asked, showing off to Charlie as the cool big brother figure.  Well played, sir! 

I did my best impression of a drunk foolishly assuring them I was fine, and tottered away into the night.  As the door closed behind me, I even started singing in an off-key, maudlin way.  As I contemplated Charlie and her guy resuming their make-out session—and escalating it, now that they had their privacy—I continued singing, all the way down the block, until some guy yelled to shut up.  Forgetting for the moment that I wasn’t actually drunk, I shouted back some mild, halfhearted obscenities.  Then I headed home, exhausted and dejected.

Did I learn anything from my brief foray into politics?  Not really … just something I’d already guessed, which is that no political effort, however humble or lofty, small or large, grassroots or massively funded, will ever exclude personal ambition of one sort or another.  There’s nothing wrong with this, of course.  Somebody’s got to do that work, and I can’t begrudge those folks their well-earned rewards.

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From Farting Liberally to Liberal Arts - The Flatulence Files

NOTE:   Needless to say, this post is chock-full of vulgar humor and coarse language.  It’s somewhere between PG-13 and R.  Also:  this post used to be called “Just A Bunch of Fart Jokes” but I’ve renamed it to (I hope) better capture the lofty literary realm I have striven to attain.

Introduction

Has your humble blogger actually hit rock bottom?  Is this post like some Hail Mary to try to get somebody’s, anybody’s, attention?  Well, it’s true that the albertnet page view count has been very low lately.  And I admit, I’m pretty disappointed that my review of the 1966 art film Andrei Rublev hasn’t been a smash hit, despite its description of a nude bacchanal and its coinage of the highly useful and suggestive phrase “Marfa-butt.”  It seems the title alone scared readers away, and I refuse to let that happen again.

I’m not just acting on a hunch here.  I did some market research:  googling “andrei  rublev review” produced a paltry 52,700 results, while googling “fart jokes” yielded 1.5 million.  Should I conclude that the Internet is replete with fart jokes, meaning I should blog about something else, now that I have your attention?  No, I would never do a bait-and-switch.  But I’m going to take a page from my own playbook and try to elevate the fart joke from its lowly oral tradition to actual Literature.

“But wait!” you might ask, “aren’t you afraid of tarnishing the albertnet brand?”  No, ever since I blogged in gory detail about getting a vasectomy, there’s really nowhere I can’t go.  “But what if your mom sees this post—won’t she be offended?”  Well, possibly—in fact, I might be doing something passive-aggressive here, because my mom still hasn’t commented on my Andrei Rublev post, for which she was supposed to be my main audience.  I’m a little hurt.

Okay, enough of this.  On to the fart jokes!

Chiropractic

You should know that I’m not going to tell one-line gags here, of the “Guy goes into a bar” sort.  I’ll start with a brief, true story.  Long ago, when my wife and I were living in a tiny apartment in San Francisco, she had one of her friends over.  This friend, whom I’ll call M—, is a striking woman—a former model, in fact—who stands about six feet tall, and may have a reputation for being a flirt.  I knew some friend was guilty of that, and this may have been that friend.  And my wife is the jealous type.

Anyway, out of nowhere M— says, “Ooh, I have a crick in my back.  Dana, can you help me out?  I’ll stand here”—she stood with her arms at her sides—“and you come up behind me, wrap your arms around me, and lift me off the floor.”  It was like a trap.  Due to our similarity in height, things would line up that really shouldn’t, what with me being married and all.

But what could I do?  It was so awkward.  I couldn’t exactly say, “I’m sorry, M—, but you might be the woman with a reputation for flirtatiousness, and the way our bodies would line up, with my wife watching … well, it’s just that she may not trust you, and may not even trust me, and I just can’t do it, but please don’t be offended ... I really am tempted because it would feel pretty awesome.”

I had to make a snap decision and concluded that my wife and I had a deep wellspring of rapport and I could explain myself better to her, later, than I could ever explain myself to our guest.  So I went around behind M—, wrapped my arms around her, and lifted her off the floor.  Sure enough, her back cracked, making a noise like one of those little wooden frogs with the bumpy back that you drag a wooden mallet over.  “Did you hear it?” M— said, delighted.  “Did you hear my back crack?”  I replied, “Oh, is that what that was … I thought you farted!”  If she had been enjoying any sexual tension, it was immediately dissipated (and replaced, of course, by something less pleasant).  I glanced over at my wife, who gave me a look that said, “You have done well.”

In the van

My pals and I were driving back from the Everest Challenge in the van.  The driver, whom I’ll call Thing 1, had extreme flatulence.  The front seat passenger, Thing 2, was suffering the worst.  These guys have known each other for well over a decade and have a totally frank, matter-of-fact rapport.  Here is my best effort to capture their dialogue about all the farting:

Thing 1:  “I’ve noticed that you’re extremely quick about rolling down your window every time I fart.”

Thing 2:  “Yes, I’ve had to develop coping mechanisms.”

Thing 1:  “You’ve got your finger hovering over the window button.  It’s been like that for the last hundred miles.”

Thing 2:  “I’ve developed a nervous tick around it.  It’s totally automatic now.  I’ll be doing this in my sleep.”

Thing 1:  “It’s the pizza.  I shouldn’t have eaten a whole pizza by myself.  I don’t do well with the white flour.”

Thing 2:  “I’m going to have a repetitive stress injury in my finger.  I’m going to have arthritis.”

Not everybody thinks farts are funny

You have to admit, farts are pretty funny.  And yet I’ve come across people who refuse to admit it.  True, many of us get jaded by cheap performance-art gags like using your hand in your armpit to make a fart sound, which cracks kids up so dependably.  And actually, there are people out there who really, truly don’t think farts are funny at all. 

(Microsoft programmers apparently fall into this group; Word has flagged “fart,” in the phrase “fart jokes,” as a misspelling, and when I right-click “fart” the spell-checker suggests “fat.”  I guess these programmers think fat jokes are funnier than fart jokes.  They are so out of touch.)

My dad is a person who simply sees nothing funny about farts.  He is very old-school in the sense that he evidently thinks farts should absolutely never be witnessed.  I have never actually heard him fart.  He’s even too discreet to produce a silent-but-deadly fart.  It’s amazing.  (Not that the polar opposite is in any way better, like the freethinking stepfather who did too much est in the ‘70s and just lets loose at will, thinking that with every burst he’s showcasing his advanced self-esteem).

As a father, I’m very different.  No, I’m not some lax, so-called progressive dad who wants his kids to see him as a pal.  I’m pretty strict; I won’t even let my kids use the word “fart.”  And no, I don’t think all farts are funny, but I won’t pretend they never are.  Here’s a little case study.  In my home office, there is only one proper desk chair, though my giant desk will accommodate three people at a time.  The most popular desk chair alternative is this giant exercise ball.  So one day my daughter and I were computing side by side, and one of us, sitting on the ball, had one of those sudden come-out-of-nowhere farts, a short and powerful one that makes the “BRROEMP!” noise.  It echoed magnificently through the ball, sounding vaguely metallic, kind of droid-like, like when you throw a rock at one of those giant municipal water tanks.  Now that is just plain funny.  We both roared with laughter.  Someday when my daughter is in treatment and her therapist asks, “Wasn’t there anything good about your father?  A single episode where his love for you came through?” she’ll reply, “Well, he once committed the most hilarious flatulence into this exercise ball….” 

(Not that I’m necessarily copping to the ball-fart.  In all honesty, I don’t remember which of us did it.  And if you suspect I’m just being evasive, well ... you may be right.)

Getting back to my own father, I think he’s too dignified even to sit on an exercise ball, unless it’s in an official yoga class.  Meanwhile, his brain occupies a higher plane than ours, devoting itself to lofty and complicated ideas, especially in the science and math realms.  Dinner table conversations usually took the form of my dad lecturing his four sons about science, computers, and futuristic stuff.  At table, there was very little joking around, and never an audible fart.  Except this one time.

Here’s what happened.  Of course I can’t remember exactly what my dad was lecturing on, but let’s suppose the topic was the interferometer he was building at work.  What, you don’t know what an interferometer is?  Here’s a photo:

I’m pretty sure interferometers measure the strength of farts.  (No they don’t.)

So, there we were at the dinner table, my dad deep into explaining the various lasers and whatnot comprising his interferometer, and suddenly—somebody farted loudly.  This had never happened because we were terribly afraid of what might transpire if it did, and there was a long, awkward silence as we boys tried to compose ourselves.  Then the awkwardness became funny (the fart had of course been funny all along), and we looked at each other, the tension thick, all our lips pursed, jaws clenched, and then somebody lost it and it was like dominoes.  The harder we laughed, the harder we laughed, and finally my dad, disgusted, got up from the table and stormed off.  He never returned to his dinner, and afterward my brother Geoff complained, “I never got to hear about the interferometer, and now I’m afraid to ask because it might remind him of the fart.  Or I might start laughing all over again.”

(“But wait,” you might ask, “aren’t you afraid of offending your dad with this post?”  Nope.  He doesn’t read my blog; like so many people, he finds my posts too long.  Besides, as I already said, he doesn’t think farts are funny!  You think his first albertnet post is gonna be “Just A Bunch of Fart Jokes” ?  But just in case he’s reading, let me say this:  Dad, I think you’re actually in the right here.  I used to think it would be funny to see a guy step in dog shit, but I realized recently that these days I wouldn’t actually find this funny, and moreover I can’t remember why I ever thought it would.  So maybe I’m maturing and growing as a person, and someday might reach your level and no longer laugh at farts.)

Spotting

My college cycling team was sponsored by Gold’s Gym and during the off-season I adopted a weight-lifting regimen with some pals.  We were purists, favoring free weights over Nautilus machines.  Being unable to add bulk to my muscles, I was following the high-weight low-rep program of a track sprinter.  My pals—two men and two women—and I would bike over there at 5:30 in the morning, four days a week.

One morning I was doing the squats, at what I considered a dangerously high weight.  We weren’t fools:  we wore weight belts and always had somebody spotting us.  If necessary, the spotter, standing a few feet behind, would step forward, grab your waist, and help you stand up.  Between sets I chatted away with my spotter, a young woman I’ll call S—.  One morning she asked, “Dana, do you like dancing?”  I was so dense I didn’t realize this might be a leading question, and answered simply (and honestly), “No.”

It was during my next set, specifically the eighth and final rep, when I was in a full squat, thighs splayed, with this giant bar across my shoulders and giant disks on either side, trying with all my might to stand, that two things dawned on me.  One, S— had actually been hinting around about going out with me (which finally answered the question of why a young woman who wasn’t that serious a cyclist and presumably wasn’t looking to bulk up would go to the gym with me at 5:30 a.m.).  My second realization was that I had to fart, and there was no real way to stop it.  Veins were bulging in my forehead, my legs trembling, and it was all I could do to safely finish my squat without needing help.  So out it went, a big ol’ ripper, with poor S— standing so close behind me.

I apologized profusely, and she responded forlornly, “It’s okay.  It doesn’t matter anyway.”  

It’s a pity; I totally would have asked her out, but I recognized the opportunity in the same moment I squashed it.

Internalized

My wife had a friend over.  The friend, P—,  had driven some way to visit; she was going through some hard times.  My wife was upstairs changing or putting on makeup or something before the two of them went out.  So I sat at the kitchen table with P— trying to make conversation.  P—’s personal troubles were making this difficult, like a dark cloud was hanging over us.  The chitchat occasionally sputtered and stalled, and to my horror I realized a big fart was gathering in my lower regions.  Isn’t it weird how you can tell in advance whether or not a fart will be silent?  This one definitely wouldn’t.  And it was growing and growing inside me and I wasn’t sure it could be contained.  I barely knew this woman and the last thing this conversation needed was that kind of explosive, smelly interruption.

I thought maybe I should just leave, but the nascent fart had grown too big.  I was practically trembling down there and I was sure that, if I stood up, it would definitely burst out.  By an act of fierce concentration I was able to keep my sphincter puckered up tight so the fart couldn’t escape.  And then the weirdest thing happened:  the fart came to fruition without ever leaving my body.  It detonated internally, making a muted but quite audible sound, like an underground nuclear test.  The worst part was that it happened during a lull in our chitchat, so I was sure P— had heard it.  I couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened, but “excuse me” seemed like too great a capitulation.  It was just barely possible that P— wouldn’t realize the what sound was.  But I had to say something, and somehow settled on, “Wow, that  was weird.”  I immediately knew I’d only made things worse, but fortunately my wife appeared at that very moment and ended the stalemate.

How to talk about farting

Let’s not kid ourselves:  everybody farts.  Probably most couples are somewhat casual about farting in each other’s presence.  After all, in some circumstances, like a long road trip, it would be bad for your health to suppress a fart for too long.  But how couples feel about their farts surely varies, with one end of the spectrum being the abominable practice of the “Dutch oven” (making a hermetic seal with the bedclothes to trap your significant other in with your fumes), and the other extreme being acute embarrassment.

So, this next bit isn’t actually drawn from personal experience, but is more of a hypothetical situation informed by the great amount of thought I have given to flatulence.  Suppose your wife or girlfriend has a stomach bug or ate too much of the wrong thing or whatever, and is on a farting tear, and decides that the frequency of her flatulence is beginning to erode her dignity.  So she approaches you in a conciliatory mode and is trying to make a generalized apology/explanation, to try to save face.  Of course you want her to dismiss the thought and stop worrying about it (if for no other reason than your vested interest in your mate feeling sexy).

Here’s what to do.  Have in mind a very celebrated beauty, whose very name summons notions of loveliness and elegance.  (You should probably not choose a contemporary beauty, lest your wife worry that you sit around dreaming of starlets.)  Now peer into your significant other’s eyes and say, “Look, everybody farts, and worse.  No less a beauty than Grace Kelly had to wipe her own ass.  She had to spot-check between wipes to determine when she was done.  I don’t know whether she was a TP folder or a wadder, but I guarantee she was one of the two.”  This should help.

Suzy Chapstick

My family took a ski trip recently.  We stayed at a lodge where all the meals are included.  The chef’s special pork chili was really, really good.  I ate like four bowls, not counting what I inherited from my daughters.  The next day I had what I’m pretty sure was the worst chronic flatulence of my life (which, as my cycling buddies will tell you, is really saying something). 

After a day of skiing my kids abandoned their equipment and headed off toward the lodge, leaving me to trail behind schlepping three pairs of skis and poles.  So I was stumbling awkwardly along and dropped one of the poles.  I was on a hill and the snow was icy, so the pole slid a ways.  I figured hey, I’ll just take this opportunity to stop for awhile and pass some more gas.  These were all silent, but they were the really hot kind, and the smell was just absolutely putrid, as though an old man, smeared from head to toe with your dad’s stinky ointment, had died while cradling a giant wheel of foreign cheese, and then man and cheese rotted away for two weeks together before being discovered. 

So I was standing there waiting for the smell to dissipate when from out of nowhere came this very chipper young woman, reminding me a lot of Suzy Chapstick (aka Suzy Chaffee, the ‘70s version of Lindsey Vonn).  “I’ll get it!” she chirped, and helpfully retrieved my fallen pole.  I felt so bad for her … I mean, here she was, just trying to be nice, and then she enters this horrible toxic cloud.  Needless to say, her attitude changed fast when the smell hit her.  Once I had my pole back, she was off like a shot.  I’m surprised she didn’t just drop it at my feet.

Restroom

What happens in the restroom, stays in the restroom.  It seems like the most discreet place to go when you need to do a lot of farting in a public venue.  So on the way back from our ski vacation, at a Mexican restaurant in Auburn, I headed in there to do some serious offgassing after an hour in the car.  I took my time, trying to get it all out, and there was some jerk who kept knocking loudly and vigorously trying the doorknob.  I kept having to call out “Just a minute!” and “Occupied!”  This went on and on and I couldn’t believe the audacity of this guy.  So when I finally left, I was planning to give him some serious stink-eye, but then I flashed on the legacy I had left in there, and knew this wasn’t even necessary.  Who needs stink-eye when I’d given him stink?

Yes, I Have a Girl’s Name

Curse of the androgynous name

Have a gander at this photo:

Does that look like a guy, or a chick?  I hope you said “guy,” because that photo is of me, at age 16.  Now, I know I don’t exactly look manly in that photo, but I don’t have a big woman-y butt or anything either.  (In fact I have no butt at all, and scarcely any flesh on my legs.)  This was a few years before I needed to start shaving.

That photo accompanied a story I wrote recently for dailypeloton.com, and it failed to clue the editor in that I’m male.  Why did he need cluing in?  Because I have a girl’s name, of course!  When I looked at the published story online, the mild thrill of seeing my byline was tempered somewhat by the introduction the editor wrote:  “To a teenage Dana Albert nothing could shake her loyalty to her beautiful British Mercian, but there was one exception that still leaves her wondering.”

I alerted the editor, and he quickly fixed the story.  He apologized, citing the infrequency of male Danas in England.  He was apparently unaware that it’s an androgynous name, at least in the U.S.  He did not say, “It would have helped if you looked more masculine in that photo.”  But he might as well have.

(I am not going to call Dana a “unisex” name in case there are people who think “unisex” means “has had sex only one time.”  I’m learning that you can never be too careful.)

Is Dana really a girl’s name?

According to Wikipedia, Dana is commonly used in the U.S. with either sex, and moreover, it is now more popular here as a boy’s name than a girl’s.  Somebody should tell that to corporate America.  So often, I’ll introduce myself on a conference call only to have the host say, “Great to have you on the call, David.”  Occasionally I’ll clarify only to have the person try again:  “Darnell?”  In e-mail exchanges, my correspondent will often decide Dana must be my last name.  Sometimes I give up trying to correct people, which is why some work contacts believe my first name is Albert.

There’s a weekly conference call I attend that requires me to give the moderator my name, with spelling.  I say, “Dana … delta, alpha, November, alpha” which should be clear as a bell, but it still trips people up.  On one occasion the moderator responded, “BANA?!”  Apparently she thought “belta” was a word.  I guess that was more credible to her than a guy being named Dana.

My college Latin prof must have thought my name on the roll call was a misprint, and took to calling me “Dale,” which (because of his peculiar accent) he pronounced “Day-oh,” which sounds just like the Latin word “deo,” which means “god.”  I let that one go, all semester.  It wasn’t until the second semester and the new roll sheet that the prof realized his mistake, apologized for calling my by the wrong name for so long, and began using my real name.  I kind of missed “deo,” to be honest.

In high school, I was frequently the first on the roll-call (based on my last name).  Often a teacher would ask in advance for help with pronunciation or a preferred nickname (e.g., “Bob” for “Robert”).  He would call my name right after this preamble, and I would say, “Here, and, uh, it’s actually pronounced DAYYYYYYY-NUUUUH!”  I would say that in as moronic a voice as possible.  (Disclaimer:  this anecdote is told most often by one of my brothers, to the point that I wonder if it’s possibly apocryphal.  Memory can be weird that way.)

My favorite name-related mistake?  When my mom introduced my wife Erin and me to her priest, she got so flustered she transposed our names, so the priest briefly thought I was Aaron and my wife was Dana.  My mom was really embarrassed.  I stuck up for her:  “I’m not so great with names, either.” 

Erin, by the way, was not amused when we were discussing names for our (as yet unborn) child, and I proposed “Aaron” for a boy and “Dana” for a girl.  Imagine the fun we could have had with telemarketers!

Is a nickname the answer?

I suppose I could find some non-confusing nickname to go by.  My grandfather had a good, solid male name—Norman—which he and/or his colleagues nevertheless didn’t like, so he went by Al.  Myself, I have a long history with nicknames.  For the first month or two of my life, my parents hadn’t agreed on a name for me, and just called me “the baby.”  As kids, my brothers called me Pain-a, which they shortened to P, which briefly became Pee Wee before morphing into Giwi.  They called me Giwi for years.  (My brother Max, whose first name is actually Chris, was nicknamed “Yo” throughout that time.)

Later on I worked at a bike shop where the owner was also named Dana, and also male.  When a customer phoned asking for Dana, it was impossible to tell which one he or she wanted, so we’d ask, “Dana the man, or Dana the boy?”  So “Dana the boy” became my nickname (with a sly allusion to “Johnny the boy,” an über-evil character in the movie Mad Max).  My other nicknames have included Dane, D’na, Uncle Elmer, Professor, Tech-Nova, Danadrive, Dane-ster, and Dana-star (this last being an accidental corruption of Dana-ster, I believe).

But why should I have to go by a nickname, just because people can’t wrap their brains around my girlish name?  I refuse!

Is there an upside to an androgynous name?

A friend (the one who coined the nickname D’na, in fact) sent me a recent article from the New York Times.  A male reader named Dana wrote to the Times ethicist, wondering if it was ethical to be awarded an internship at a tech company on the basis of having been thought female (since tech firms, he believed, seek to balance the sexes in the male-dominated realm).  The ethicist replied that for these hypothetical employers to guess his sex based on his name was their problem, and anyway Dana was the name the reader had been given so he’s free to use it.

Makes sense, but what about other scenarios?  What if being thought female could be a disadvantage, like if the employer is sexist in the traditional way?  I wonder what opportunities I might have missed out on based on my chick name.  Should I try going by D.P. Albert, following the example of S.E. Hinton, who feared nobody could take seriously her novel about gang violence if they’d known she was a woman? 

I guess it depends on what I’m trying to do.  I doubt being female is much of a hindrance in modern publishing, and in fact my name may have helped me get into a very exclusive creative writing class in college.  The professor, Maxine Hong Kingston, was reputed to favor females, though I have no reason to believe this was true (other than having gotten into her class).

My androgynous name did help me recruit students for a bike repair class I hosted as a fund-raiser for my daughter’s school.  To my surprise, almost all my students were female.  Don’t guys want to fix their own bikes?  Or are they unable to admit they don’t know how?  The one male who attended saw all those women and must have been spooked, because he only stayed a little while.  I know for a fact that at least one of my students expected me to be female:  she actually complained about what seemed, to her, a bait-and-switch.  All because my flier at the school auction had my (girlie) name on it.

Comeuppance

It is impossible for me to feel sorry for myself whenever my name causes confusion, because I myself am responsible for an egregious error  of my own.  In high school biology class, I had a couple of pals, Bill and Ken.  Early on, Bill heard me refer to Ken as “he” and corrected me:  “Ken is a girl!”  I was surprised, but mainly because Ken is so obviously a boy’s name.  Other than that, the claim didn’t seem so outlandish.  Despite having short hair and a flat chest, Ken did seem rather feminine.  But Ken, for a girl?  Bill insisted this was the case, and so I believed him.  I mean, why would he lie?

So, for months I believed that I’d actually made friends with a girl.  This was a first; normally, at that age, I was so terrified of girls I could barely speak in their presence.  This fear began in junior high, when I somehow fell into conversation with a girl I had a total crush on.  It seemed to be going well, and I got so excited I decided the only thing keeping me from being downright suave was my orthodontic appliance, a big gross thing called a Frankel, which required me to speak through clenched teeth.  This was tricky, especially since the Frankel tended to make me drool, which I was probably doing to begin with because this girl was so cute.  So I decided to ditch the Frankel, as casually as possible.  I discreetly popped open the plastic Frankel case and kind of let the Frankel fall out of my mouth right into it.  The girl recoiled, made a horrible face, and turned away.  She never talked to me again.

And yet, around Ken I was so natural, so relaxed, so … myself!  I realized (erroneously) that it was actually possible to be friends with a girl so long as there was no physical attraction whatsoever.  This might not seem like any big deal until you consider the raging hormones of a teenager.  I was feeling downright sophisticated.

Well, as you can guess, this illusion didn’t hold up forever.  One day, the teacher was having us grade one another’s tests (calling out the right answers while we, disinterested third parties that we were, marked our neighbor’s answers right or wrong).  I was grading Ken’s paper and came upon a grey area.  I raised my hand and said, “She put such-and-such.”  Ken said, “What?!?”  I said, “I said, ‘She put such-and-such,’ which you did—look.” 

She—er, he—said, “You said ‘she!’”  To which I replied, innocently, “Well, yeah, of course—you’re a girl!”  Having long believed this to be the case, I said this completely innocently.  Red-faced, Ken said indignantly, “No I’m not, I’m a boy!”  The whole class erupted in laughter.  I was still baffled, and said (with sincere incredulity), “You’ve gotta be kidding me!”  More laughter.  Man, once I realized what was going on, I felt so bad.  Of course our “friend” Bill was laughing hardest of all.

(Did my friendship with Ken survive this humiliating misunderstanding?  Honestly, I can’t recall.  The aftermath is eclipsed by that of a similar gaff.  In chemistry class the next year, I had a friend with a funny surname (Deutschlander) and really bad breath.  One day, when we were doing a lab together, I just couldn’t tolerate his breath anymore, and—thinking I was doing him a favor—drew his attention to it.  The problem was, I was in such a huff I accidentally called him by the secret nickname everybody used behind his back:  Douche-lander.  Between the criticism and the nickname, he was completely offended and never talked to me again.)

In conclusion, when it comes to being mistaken for female, I guess I’d much rather this confusion be based on my name appearing in print, with nothing else to go by.  So far as I know, the people I meet aren’t whispering to each other, “That is the ugliest woman I have ever seen.”

Sonnet Class (almost) Crashes & Burns

Introduction

A couple years ago, I posted a guide, “How to Write a Sonnet,” to albertnet.  I didn’t expect anybody to read it, but it has actually become one of my most popular posts.  When I realized that more people are interested in this obscure activity than I’d thought, I decided to offer a sonnet writing class as a prize for the fundraising auction for my daughter’s school.  I figured if I could get half a dozen people to sign up (and pay the tuition to the PTA) it would be worth giving a class.

Enough people signed up, so I held the class last summer.  Not surprisingly, a few of the registered students flaked, so I had my two daughters attend, to increase the liveliness of our discussions.  I figured if these little kids participated, that might draw out the shyer students.  (I don’t reckon a lot of extroverts go in for sonnet writing.)  This post documents the struggles I had with the class; how I publicly shamed my daughter; and how she had the last laugh.  Much of this tale is told in sonnets, including sonnets from each of my daughters.

The class

I ended up with three adults and one child among the “non-scholarship” students (i.e., besides my daughters).  I transferred most of the contents of my sonnet essay to a flip-chart, which made the lecture really easy to give.  The kid who attended, who must have been forced into it by his mom or dad, didn’t say a word.  He was probably terrified (as I would have been at that age).  But the refreshments were a hit, and everything seemed to go pretty well until the workshop.  We were all supposed to get started writing sonnets.  Nothing lofty, of course; I’d suggested a “Jabberwocky” strategy of writing about any topic or no topic, with lines that didn’t need to make any sense at all.  The idea was to practice iambic pentameter and the ABABCDCDEFEFGG rhyme scheme (click here for details).  Unfortunately, everybody seemed to have writer’s block, at least at first.

As I recall it, the only person who was getting anywhere was my younger daughter, Lindsay.  She is of course well accustomed to asking me for help on her homework, so as she composed a line she would ask me if the meter and rhyme were right.  Before too long she had a pretty good sonnet going:

In case that’s a bit hard to make out, here’s what she wrote:

My fluffy cat is going to bed now

With dreams of tigers chasing mice and dogs.

She wakens with a slightly startled meow

But hopes to dream of tasty polliwogs.

And soon her eyes begin to slightly close.

Sometimes she dreams of Tom and Jerry’s fights.

This time Tom might just win; really, who knows?

I thought this was a great start.  The meter was pretty good, and the rhymes perfect, and the content I found charming.  But it didn’t seem to be inspiring anybody.  Oddest of all, my older daughter, Alexa, hadn’t written a thing.

Why did I find this odd?  Well, Alexa has written at least three sonnets (one is included at the end of my how-to post) and has shown remarkable facility.  She was supposed to by my “ringer,” the little kid who made it look easy.  I wondered if perhaps her very success was holding her back.  Had I screwed up and praised her for her earlier work, so now she was afraid of falling from grace?  I couldn’t think of any other explanation.  I asked why she wasn’t writing anything.  “I don’t feel like it,” she replied.

Desperate measures

I was beginning to get worried.  I’d budgeted an hour for this workshop.  I felt like if nobody actually wrote anything, I might have to consider whether I’d only imagined the good interaction we’d had during the first part of the class.  (In retrospect I realize that people must have been paying attention because they did well on the quiz.)  I knew it wouldn’t matter that much if the class was a success or not, but I was starting to feel embarrassed.

Hmmm, embarrassment.  This gave me an idea.  I figured there was a pretty good chance I could shame Alexa into writing something.  The question was, if I did this, would I go to Hell for it?  Was this a good trade-off—possibly rescuing myself from embarrassment, but at my daughter’s expense?  How sensitive are pre-teens, anyway?  But deep in my heart I knew that having had this idea, I’d follow through with it.  After all, I’m of the character-building school of parenting.

Of course, there’s a right way and a wrong way to embarrass your kids in front of others.  (Well, actually, I’m sure there are countless wrong ways to do it.)  The best way I could think of, under the circumstances, was to embarrass her through verse.  This was a sonnet class, after all.  I hadn’t planned to write anything myself during the workshop, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

My gauntlet-sonnet

Here’s the partial sonnet I wrote, and then read aloud to the class, in order to lay down the gauntlet for Alexa:

I fear my sonnet class has crashed and burned

Because Alexa has refused to write.

My pedagogic efforts she has spurned,

Her fertile thoughts decaying into blight.

Because she’s had success with this before,

She clearly wants to quit while she’s ahead.

Pretending that this sonnet stuff’s a bore

Assuages a peculiar kind of dread.

This got a good laugh, and poor Alexa got pretty red in the face.  Seeing this, I became nervous.  What would she do now?  If she stormed out of the room, the resulting awkwardness would be pretty much intolerable for everybody.  Suddenly my tactic seemed absurdly foolish and I was kicking myself for taking such a risk. 

But Alexa didn’t storm off.  She grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and started to write.

Redemption!

With Alexa scribbling furiously away, the others perhaps felt inspired because bit by bit students began writing, and reading what they’d written, a few lines at a time.  (Since I didn’t have anybody turn anything in, I’m not able to quote my students’ work.)  Before long, Alexa announced that she was ready to read her sonnet.  Not just the first few lines, but the whole dang thing.  Here’s what she wrote:

I contemplate the bowl of foul greens

Which holds me back from access to dessert.

To dump them on the floor, yet not be seen...

No, not with parents constantly alert.

I simply cannot bring myself to eat

That sickly substance calling itself food.

Just managing to bite it—what a feat!

But to refuse, no, that would not be shrewd.

Dessert!  Dessert!  To me it is required.

The sweetness simply makes my life complete.

Of filthy veggies, oh, I am so tired;

Against dessert, they simply can’t compete.

    Boy, I am glad that we do have a cat

    She’s saved my life, well, many times at that.

One of the great things about parenting is how much joy I get from losing to my kids.  That old saying “He who laughs last, laughs best” certainly applies here, but it’s hard to imagine that Alexa’s triumph and satisfaction exceeded my own at that moment.  In fact, I was so moved, I decided to finish my sonnet and chronicle her triumph.  Fortunately, the workshop was getting livelier and I didn’t have a chance until a day or two later.

The rest of my sonnet

Alexa kind of wrote the second half of my sonnet, in the sense that she inspired the content (which for me is generally the hardest part).  Here’s the whole sonnet:

I fear my sonnet class has crashed and burned

Because Alexa has refused to write.

My pedagogic efforts she has spurned,

Her fertile thoughts decaying into blight.

Because she’s had success with this before,

She clearly wants to quit while she’s ahead.

Pretending that this sonnet stuff’s a bore

Assuages a peculiar kind of dread.

But wait—because I’ve read these lines aloud

(Thus shaming her in front of everyone)

She’s taken up a pen.  She’s far too proud

To be the victim of my wicked fun.

If we could see inside that precious head

We’d see a lightning storm of brilliant thought!

Pen flashing, from behind she darts ahead.

She’s first to read, her sonnet deftly wrought.

     Alexa, in restoring her good name

     Has gone and put the rest of us to shame.

I would like to point out that I did get Alexa’s permission before telling this tale and sharing these sonnets on this blog.  (Lindsay gave me permission too, but asked me to explain that she’s not done with her poem yet.)

If you’re a Bay Area person and would like to take a sonnet-writing class next year, e-mail me and let me know, because I plan to offer this class again at the 2014 school auction.  Who knows, maybe next time I can put Lindsay in the line of fire!

Epilogue - January 11, 2014

Remember the good start my younger daughter, Lindsay, had on her sonnet?  Well, a week or two before Christmas I suggested that she finish that sonnet as a gift to me.  This she did.  Her sister typed it up for her and helped her print it out.  Here it is now!  (Since her sister chose to leave in the misspellings, I have followed suit.)

My fluffy cat is going to bed now
With dreams of tigers chasing mice and dogs
She wakens with a slitely startled myow
But hopes to dream of tasty pollywogs

And soon her eyes begin to slitly clows 
Sometimes she dreams of Tom and Jerry’s fites
This time Tom might just win, really, who nows?
When Jerry leaves he’s covered with cat bites 

When wacend our cat tries to sleep again
In resting her expreshon is quite smug
She uses blankcets to make cumfy dens
I wake our cat and give her a big hug

   Not only is she lazy but shes fat,
   Our cat is cute thers no dening that.