The Village Nark

It takes a village to nark on each other’s kids.

Ever since we were able to buy a home within walking distance to downtown Northampton, I’ve anticipated with mixed emotions the time when my kids would eventually be out and about on their own. I loved the fact that they would be able to get downtown by foot and wouldn’t be dependent on rides. I didn’t love the fact that they would ever be out of my sight.

Fortunately, in this little city, that’s not such a problem, because the eyes are everywhere.

So far, no one has ever narked on Chuck for questionable behavior, but I always get reports from friends when they see him. They are often delighted that he seems to know who they are. I feel the same way when the teens I know prove to be aware of my existence.

I, however, have been narking on my friends’ kids for years. Often, it is innocent:

“Hey, I saw Artie walking down King Street toward Stop and Shop.
“What? He’s not supposed to do that!”
“Whoops. Sorry Artie.”

Sometimes I’m not sure whether I should nark, so I take an oblique approach. When I saw a friend’s son biking without a helmet, I posted on Facebook: “If you saw a friend’s child biking down Elm Street without a helmet, would you tell them.” Conveniently, the offending teen’s mom was the first to respond with: “I’d want to know.” I told her. Hopefully she didn’t reveal her source.

Last week, on the first warmish spring day, I looked out my window too see a friend’s daughter biking through the cemetery. At first I thought it was a rather odd woman pertly biking on a child’s bike with a big flowered basket, not unlike Miss Gulch in The Wizard of Oz. This would not be out of the realm of possibility in Northampton. Then I realized it was just a very pert child, one I knew. This led to another inadvertent narking.

- Is your child biking around the cemetery?
- Are they biking? I told them they could go to the cemetery together. I didn’t want them biking in it. Do you only see one??
- Oh jeez – am I narking on them? Now I see two.
- I appreciate the narking.

What followed was a hilarious thread about biking in cemeteries, gravestones shaped like penises, and how glad we are that everyone is looking out for our kids. For the record, these girls were wearing their helmets.

Sometimes the little city network is good just for keeping track of the kids. A year ago, on a Friday afternoon, I realized that I had no idea where Chuck was. He had walked from the middle school to downtown Florence, a village within the city limits of Northampton (or DT Floho, as he called it at the time). As usual, he wasn’t answering his cell phone, most likely because it was out of battery power. I mused on Facebook that I wished I had a tracking device implanted on him so I could trace him. Within minutes, a friend posted that she had just seen him walking down her street, which told me where he was and where he was going.

’Round here, we don’t need tracking devices or, apparently, cell phone battery power. We just need the village.

Challah and Grape Juice

I loved Chuck’s preschool. It was exactly like mine—the nursery school at the synagogue. They learned the same Hebrew words and songs that we did, learned about the same holidays, and every Friday they celebrated Shabbat with challah and grape juice. There are few food combinations more perfect than challah and grape juice.

The preschool could have been a little more diverse—OK, a lot more diverse—and it retained remnants of the old days when most families didn’t have two working parents: they closed at 3:00 p.m. every day, at noon on Fridays, and there was no school in the summer. When the fall Jewish holidays fell on weekdays, it seemed like the kids missed school every other day. But it was a warm community with many of our favorite families. They brought us meals when Ted was born; I still remember every single one.

The fact that our kids’ first day of preschool was September 11, 2001 may or may not have contributed to the closeness of the group. We dropped off our kids that morning, thinking that leaving our babies with others for the first time was the most significant pain we’d face that day. At dismissal three hours later, the parents—most of whom came to Northampton from New York City—were red-eyed and in shock, whispering with each other and trying not to broadcast their trauma to the kids.

We followed with two academic years of playdates, field trips, crafts, and plenty of challah and grape juice. When they were ready for kindergarten, the kids went in many different directions. Some went to the local Jewish day school, others scattered to the various elementary schools in town. It’s a small city, so we’d see each other often, but only a few continued to be regular parts of our lives.

Last week, at a parent’s meeting at the high school, I realized that most of the preschool parents were in the room. With the exception of a few kids, all of our children are back in school together for 9^th grade. We haven’t aged a day, but oy, those kids got old. They aren’t all close friends, but there is no doubt that the connections are still there. You can see it especially when they gather together every Friday morning in the high school’s cafeteria for challah and grape juice.

Oh! Costco!

Sometimes I have to leave Northampton to buy things. Like tires. You can get tires in Northampton, but we joined Costco to get deals on things like that. So sometimes we have to drag ourselves down I-91.

Costco and I have a good, respectful relationship and they have a good corporate reputation. Nonetheless, the following is how every single trip to Costco plays out in my head.

###

Gosh the people who work here are nice. And not even in a pasted-on smile kind of way.

Cool biz, I can transfer our family videos to DVD here! Gotta remember to do that.

Look at all these great deals up front. Fred needs a new jacket—maybe I should call him about this one. And hey, my cell phone even works in here.

Damn, if we ever need a new TV, we’re buying it here.

Look at all these appliances. Maybe I should finally replace the microwave. Eh, I’ll wait a little longer.

I LOVE this place!

Wow, those folding tables are inexpensive. We need a folding table, don’t we?

I wonder if I can lift that package of batteries.

Ooh, the food. Oh, the giant chocolate cake. Oh the gargantuan pies. Samples!

Nom nom nom.

Maybe I should buy lots of this food and stock up until the end of time. Too overwhelming, too overwhelming, too overwhelming. Keep moving.

Those blueberries aren’t local, are they?

How can anyone find room in their house for that much toilet paper?

I could never use that much food.

Why does anyone need these giant packages of food?

WHY DOES ANYONE NEED THIS MUCH FOOD? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY?

GIANT MAYONNAISE???

COFFEE, COFFEE, COFFEE!

Can I afford a $30 bottle of calcium even if it is a bargain?

I hate this place.

What? No bags?

Aaaaand scene.

It’s the Little Things

Our doctors’ office is a conventional place. The daytime waiting room is filled with elderly people, the magazines are slightly out of date, and the eye chart begins with E. There’s a sign on the scale that reads “Please let us know in advance if you don’t want to know your weight”—a nice touch.

But there is a slight difference here. On their standard medical history form, under “gender,” you have the choice of three boxes to check: male, female, and transgender.

It’s one simple word. But it makes a significant statement about the practice and my community and the importance of recognition and dignity.

Plus, they have a receptionist who answers the phone exactly like a 1950s secretary cliché.

The Writing on the Wall

We get a higher level of graffiti here in the little city.

In the women’s bathroom next to Herrell’s, you can read the following exchange:

“Blankey blank” is a HUGE C-word!

and below

Constantinople is a huge C-word, too.

I so want to be friends with the person who wrote that.

It’s Quiet Around Here

Too quiet.

While other projects keep me from these pages, please read my recent essays in Jezebel and Salon and my weekly posts on the Massachusetts Civil War Sesquicentennial Website.

Life in the Big City

Toto, I don't think we're in Northampton anymore.

No matter how idyllic one finds life in the little city, sometimes you need a dose of life in the big city. So the family took a trip to New York to kick off spring break. It was like most of our trips to New York, with lots of love for the city and amazing little moments, and plenty of frustration: Ted’s awe at the Guggenheim (he’s a Frank Lloyd Wright fan, go figure), the quiet of Sunday morning in the city, breaking Passover with Joe’s Pizza in the Village, malts at the Lexington Candy Store, and happening upon a rehearsal of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Washington Square Park. There was also too much walking, too much whining, and too many problematic meal choices.

As always, New York inspired a host of questions. Feel free to answer them. Or pose more.

Who are all these people? How did they get here? (If I had my way, everyone in the city would walk around with a bubble over their heads—à la Pop Up Video—noting who they are, where they are from, and how they came to be in the city at that moment.)

How can anyone afford to live in New York City?

How can there be enough rich people to fill all of those high-rise apartments, especially the ridiculous number of Trump Towers along the Henry Hudson Parkway?

Why do so many of them drive Porsches?

Why are there so many Porsche SUVs?

What kind of idiot drives an SUV in NYC?

What happens if there is a car accident? Does the whole city come to a standstill? It seems pretty clear that if one car stops for more than 3 minutes, all traffic stops everywhere.

How did my teenager get obsessed with high-end shoes, high-end headphones, and high-end cars?

With so many churches, bakeries, and gelato shops, how come everyone isn’t devout and/or fat?

How do those women walk more than ten feet in those shoes?

How do you do anything without getting totally overwhelmed by the options?

Where do all of the waiters and baristas, et al. live? They can’t possibly afford to live in the city.

Why is everyone speaking French?