teenagers – Don't Gel Too Soon

Big Birthday Memory #15: John Kennedy, Barack Obama, 2 Inaugurations and 2 Generations of Dreamers

NOTE: As I approach my 70th birthday, I’ll reprise a milestone post here each day until the end of May. Today – from May 8, 2014

I seem to be living in the Way Back Machine this year. Lots of memories of 1968 and even 1963. Now as January 20, 2009 approaches, yet another looms. January 20, certainly, but in 1961.

See that crowd? Somewhere, way in the back, probably at least a block beyond, stand an almost-fifteen-year-old girl and her mother. Fresh off an overnight train from Pittsburgh, having arrived at Union Station in time to watch the Army flame-throwers melt a blizzard’s worth of snow on the streets of the inaugural route, they make their way to their parade seats: in the bleachers, way down near the Treasure Building.

I spent most of 1960 besotted with John Kennedy. And Jackie. And Caroline. And all the other Kennedys who came with them. Most of my lunch money went to bus fare as, after school, I shuttled back and forth “to town” to volunteer in the local JFK headquarters. I even had a scrapbook of clippings about Kennedy and his family.

So. My parents surprised me with these two parade tickets. My mom and I took the overnight train and arrived
around dawn Inauguration morning. We couldn’t get into the swearing-in itself, of course, so we went to a bar that served breakfast (at least that’s how I remember it) and watched the speech on their TV, then made our way along the snowy sidewalks to our seats, arriving in time to watch the new president and his wife roll by, to see his Honor Guard, the last time it would be comprised solely of white men (since Kennedy ordered their integration soon after,) in time to see the floats and the Cabinet members and the bands and the batons.

It was very cold. We had no thermos, no blankets, nothing extra, and my mom, God bless her, never insisted that we go in for a break, never complained or made me feel anything but thrilled. Which I was. As the parade drew to a close, and the light faded, we stumbled down the bleachers, half-frozen, and walked the few blocks to the White House fence. I stood there, as close to the fence as I am now to my keyboard, and watched our new president enter the White House for the first time as Commander-in-Chief.

That was half a century ago. I can’t say it feels like yesterday, but it remains a formidable and cherished memory. It was also a defining lesson on how to be a parent; it took enormous love and respect to decide to do this for me. I was such a kid – they could have treated my devotion like a rock star crush; so young, they could have decided I would “appreciate it more” next time. (Of course there was no next time.) Instead, they gave me what really was the lifetime gift of being a part of history. And showed me that my political commitment had value – enough value to merit such an adventure.

Who’s to say if I would have ended up an activist (I did)- and then a journalist (I did) – without those memories. If I would have continued to act within the system rather than try to destroy it. (I did) If I would have been the mom who took kids to Europe, brought them along on news assignments to Inaugurations and royal weddings and green room visits with the Mets (Yup, I did.) I had learned to honor the interests and dreams of my children the way my parents had honored my own. So it’s hard for me to tell parents now to stay home.

My good friend, the wise and gifted PunditMom, advises “those with little children” to skip it, and since strollers and backpacks are banned for security reasons, I’m sure she’s right. But if you’ve got a dreamer in your house, a young adult who has become a true citizen because of this election, I’d try to come. After all, he’s their guy. What he does will touch their lives far more than it will ours. Being part of this beginning may determine their willingness to accept the tough sacrifices he asks of them – at least that – and probably, also help to build their roles as citizens – as Americans – for the rest of their lives. Oh — and will tell them that, despite curfews and learner’s permits, parental limit-setting and screaming battles, their parents see them as thinking, wise and effective people who will, as our new President promised them, help to change

Lost: a Rapper from 8 Mile and some Men, Women and Children from Austin

Remember 8 Mile, the sad story of a neglected trailer park teen from Detroit – supposedly pretty close to the story of its creator, rapper Eminem?

I kept thinking about it as I watched Men, Women and Children, the profoundly moving story of a different kind of alienation at least partially enabled by the Internet. Nobody’s mom was an abusive alcoholic, but one mom fled her family so completely that she blocked her son Tim from her Facebook account, one sold slightly risqué images of her cheerleader daughter online and yet another intercepted and read every online communication to and from her daughter Brandy and tracked her movements with a tracker on her phone; Brandy was so stifled that she created a secret online identity just to get away once in a while.

It’s a beautiful film, a survey of young people so much on their own ; life online allows so much distance from parents and any love or wisdom they might offer. And even though they make mistakes beyond the web, the same technology seems to have trapped their parents, too.

Reitman chooses to move beyond individual dramas, however, and take us beyond his own observations as he closes the film with Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space – with a hopeful description that connects us all to one another: enemy or friend, alive or dead, present or past, online or off:

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

John Kennedy, Barack Obama, 2 Inaugurations and 2 Generations of Dreamers

I seem to be living in the WayBack Machine this year. Lots of memories of 1968 and even 1963. Now as January 20, 2009 approaches, yet another looms. January 20, certainly, but in 1961.

TEEN AGE GIRLS AND CELL PHONE STALKERS!

You know all those amused, indulgent stories about teenagers texting and cell phoning at all hours? And how great they are at multi-tasking? Well if you believe this piece, running on AlterNet after appearing in the Christian Science Monitor, (and there is no reason not to) there is, as usual, a very very very dark side to this "cute" phenomenon.

Liz Claiborne Inc. teamed up with the National Domestic Violence Hotline and conducted a survey of teen cellphone use. The survey, conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, reported that "20 to 30 percent of teens who had been in relationships said their partner had constantly checked in on them, had harassed or insulted them, or had made unwanted requests for sexual activity, all via cellphones or text messages. One out of 4 reported hourly contact with a dating partner between midnight and 5 a.m. — in some cases, 30 times per hour. And 1 out of 10 had received physical threats electronically."

Even if half of that is true, it’s scary and sad. You can just imagine a 14 year old girl, inexperienced in relationships, trying to handle this kind of overbearing behavior. What I wonder though is WHY? In an adult relationship we would call this emotional abuse and, often, a prelude to physical abuse. AND I remember when I worked for a youth TV news program, doing several pieces on boyfriends abusing their teen girlfriends. But this is so much easier to hide — and is so scarily omnipresent and unpredictable at the same time, that it just shakes you to your core.

There are days when I wonder what it’s going to take to get this man-woman thing right when even the boy-girl part is so often destructive. And wonder, too, how we help these girls (and I suppose there are boys too) have the confidence to put a stop to it when it happens. Heavy thoughts for a snowy Tuesday.