Teaching teenagers

I don't claim to have gained any particular wisdom with the passing of the years, but I do feel that I have become a fairly good observer of other human beings. In particular, I feel that I understand teenagers.

As I may have mentioned before, I don't have a full-time job, but I do volunteer at my daughter's hippie cooperative school teaching English to the middle-schoolers. First semester I taught poetry, and this semester I am teaching drama. The youngest group is currently reading Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, and the two older groups are reading Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth. It's fun, because they have such a fresh take on the plays, not having seen, read, or even heard much about them before (I thought everyone knew the story of Romeo and Juliet! What's wrong with modern society? Grrrr!) Their most frequent comments are along the lines of "That's so messed up!" (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth plotting to kill Duncan), and "Eww, gross!" (Juliet's nurse joking about the wedding night, or the Weird Sisters discussing the contents of their cauldron).

For Romeo and Juliet, I have selected four acclaimed film versions for the students to watch scenes from: the 1936 George Cukor film starring Leslie Howard as Romeo and Norma Shearer as Juliet; the 1954 Renato Castellani film starring Laurence Harvey as Romeo (yes, really) and Susan Shentall as Juliet;

the 1978 Franco Zeffirelli film starring Leonard Whiting as Romeo and Olivia Hussey as Juliet (whatever happened to them, I wonder?); and the 1996 Baz Luhrmann film starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo and Claire Danes as Juliet. I wasn't sure how these young teenagers would react to these films: would they be bored? confused? annoyed? What I wasn't prepared for was the unbridled hilarity. They hoot with laughter as Juliet sighs "Ay me!" and snort helplessly when Romeo declaims, "O speak again, bright angel!" While I knew they wouldn't be able to relate to the very mature Howard and Shearer (What was the director thinking when he cast them?), I was shocked to find that they dissolved into gales of laughter over the younger actors as well.

What on earth is going on here? I remember being indignant when my Shakespeare professor Thomas McCavera told us long ago in the Shakespearean tragedy survey course I was taking my sophomore year that Elizabethan groundlings would have been rolling on the ground laughing at Romeo and Juliet; that true love was seen as the province of older people, and that such tender young things as Romeo and Juliet (supposedly aged between 13 and 18–not too clear on Romeo's age, but Capulet says of Juliet at one point, "She hath not seen the change of fourteen years") wouldn't have the first idea of what love was.

I asked my students, "Do you believe in love at first sight?" and the answer came back a resounding "NO!" That surprised me. I thought there might be a romantic or two in the class, but they all were very certain of their answer. It was actually quite refreshing. They all mocked Romeo's quick transfer of love from Rosaline to Juliet, and snickered at their haste to get to the wedding chapel (and thence to bed). They were exasperated by all the rash decisions they made, and they did not see any part of themselves in the doomed lovers. Reading from their point of view, I began to suspect Prof. McCavera was right about the humor in the play.

So, while I'm excited about introducing the kids to Shakespeare and all that his genius has put forth, I am also delighted to experience these plays that I spent decades studying in a fresh new light. Teenagers are maddening, moody, oppositional, and argumentative; they have the attention span of a gnat, the patience of a kitten, and the self-reflection of a lemur,* but their views and ideas are clear and as yet unclouded by what they think they're supposed to think. They react strongly and viscerally, and their opinions pour out of their mouths without much reflection.

In short, they're more than a little like Romeo and Juliet themselves.

*I say lemur, because they jump from branch to branch nonstop, sometimes missing and falling a bit before catching another branch. They seem the epitome of unreflective action. Oh well, I tried.

The Joys of Living Vicariously

People always say you should actively live your own life, not passively experience life through others. It's such a commonly held belief that it is often regarded as an obvious fact, a truth universally acknowledged. I, of course, believe this as well–what sane person wouldn't?–but I also secretly love living my vicarious life. Like otaku, or bored housewives in suburbia, or the creepy, balding, middle-aged guys who live in their parents' basements and play video games all day, I have a hidden life that takes place in books, in films, on television, and online, and it is so much more exciting and vibrant than my day-to-day existence.

Don't be so shocked, Unknown Reader. The name GeekMom kind of gives it away, doesn't it? I'm geeky and nerdy, and we geeks and nerds don't often mix well with normal people. I say the wrong things, forget to acknowledge people, enthuse about the wrong topics, go in for a hug at the wrong moment, or flinch when other people hug me unexpectedly. I frequently embarrass my children with my odd behavior (Well, I do have a teenager and they're embarrassed even by normal parents, so that doesn't really count).

For instance, I keep up a running conversation with other cars on the road when I'm driving ("Oh, nice move, Mr. Toyota, thanks for pulling in front of me without signalling" "Hey, Lady, get off your cell phone–the light has changed and we're all waiting for you!" "La la la, I'm driving an SUV so I can take up half of your lane as well as my own!"), and this is a great embarrassment for my 10-year-old daughter. She turns to her friend and says, "Don't pay any attention to Mama. She always talks to other cars. I've learned to live with it." Then she gives a tiny sigh. Poor child, how she suffers!

Okay, end of digression. The truth is, I'm usually uncomfortable around normal people. I'm terrible at parties. When I was in high school and college, I used to hang out by the potato chip bowl (Why is there always a big bowl of potato chips at parties? Is it some sort of party requirement? Must remember to Google this), steadily eating one chip after another while successfully avoiding all conversation. Also, since I don't really like drinking much, I can't even use that to loosen up. Though I really needed a drink after all those salty chips.

As a fifty-year old divorcee who doesn't have full-time work and has primary custody of a pre-teen daughter and a teenage son, a dog, and several cats, my life is fairly routine. Not a lot of excitement there. So what is the solution to add a little zip to my life? Vicarious living! Hurrah!

My favorite source of vicarious living is books.  Charles Dickens is great for vicarious living, as are Michael Ondaatje, Kate Atkinson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, J.R.R. Tolkien, and J.K. Rowling (the Harry Potter series--I haven't read The Casual Vacancy yet). For vicarious romance, however, nothing beats Jane Austen. That Mr. Darcy! That Captain Wentworth! Mr. Ferrars and Colonel Brandon! Swoon! (At this point, I have probably alienated all of my heterosexual male readers. Don't worry, guys, I'll talk about Star Trek and Doctor Who and Dune in a later post!)

The point is, I get all the thrill of romantic tension, the fluttery feelings, the doubts ("Does he love me?"), the triumphs ("He does!"), the promise of future bliss ("Reader, I married him." Yes, I know that's Bronte, not Austen, she remarked testily), and the warm afterglow as I close the book.

All that without the guy leaving his dirty socks on the bedroom floor, toothpaste globs in the bathroom sink, or the New York Times scattered all across the room, with the crossword half filled out, incorrectly, in pen. Not that Mr. Darcy would ever do any of those things! In any case, I've come to terms with the fact that all my ideal men were invented by women writers, and are thus unlikely to be found anywhere in the real world. So why not love as well as live vicariously?

Then, of course, there are movies. All Jane Austen novels have been made into movies (including some that probably shouldn't have been–does anyone really need a film version of Northanger Abbey?), and there are so many other worlds to disappear into. And there are television series. Wish you were involved in politics and great affairs of state? Watch "The West Wing"! Wish you were a spy? Watch "MI-5" ("Spooks" in the U.K.)! Wish you were brilliant and could solve baffling crimes? Watch "Sherlock"! Wish you were brilliant and could solve mysterious ailments? Watch "House"! Wish you descended from English nobility? Watch "Downton Abbey" or "Upstairs, Downstairs"! The ways of escaping your mundane existence are myriad. I won't even go into the Internet and vlog channels at this point, because my post is getting much too long, according to my blogging mentor, who thinks my paragraphs are too long as well. I'll save some thoughts for future posts. In the meantime, Mr. Darcy and I are meeting for coffee, so I have to go.

Oh, God, I hope you don't think I do that all the time!

Why do we spend so much of our lives embarrassed? This thought often comes to me, especially when I am apologizing for a particular like or dislike that has slipped out in the course of conversation. I catch a glimpse of a raised eyebrow, a dip of the corner of the mouth, a flaring of the nostrils in my interlocutor, and I mentally (or even physically) flush, and I rush to explain, to belittle, or to qualify what I've just said. Yes, even though I was writing my dissertation on "The Failure of Rebellion in Romantic Drama–England, France, and Germany" when I finally fled graduate school, never to return, I really, really loved reading the Harry Potter books. And even though I know the Arab Spring is a very important social and historical phenomenon, I just don't care.

Even as I type these statements, I cringe in self-denigration. No doubt you, Unknown Reader, are appalled by either my evident bad taste or my cynical apathy.

I seem at times to swim in seas of embarrassment. It is the bane of my existence. I blush, I stammer, I fall silent, I bite my words back. Why can't I revel in being myself? Where is my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world?

I am filled with admiration for people who don't care how they look or sound to others, who present themselves simply and straightforwardly, without apology. I think this was why I was first attracted to my ex-husband: his utter lack of self-consciousness whether he was serenading me in the middle of a restaurant, grabbing me around the waist and waltzing with me in a bookstore that just happened to be playing a waltz as background music, or wearing a kilt on the subway. While my face flamed and my eyes stayed downcast, he would blithely go about his singing or dancing or kilt-wearing and offer friendly smiles to those who mocked him. If only I had that kind of confidence and self-possession! I thought. Then....

Then what? I don't know. Life would be easier? Surely not. It wasn't for my ex-husband. But wouldn't it be heaven, though, to be be liberated from all that humiliation? I think it must be at least a tiny bit wonderful.

I watch my son and daughter, who are extremely self-conscious and easily embarrassed, and I wonder if my own constant embarrassment has had an effect on them. I never mock them or belittle their likes and dislikes (okay, maybe I did a little when my daughter was going through a very brief Justin Bieber phase), but somehow all that embarrassment oozes down to them anyway. Am I inadvertently teaching them shame by example? Who am I kidding? Peer pressure alone can crush a child more completely than anything a mere parent can dish out.

Which brings me to the next question: Why do we (not my family, but society as a whole) feel compelled to mock others? I think in most cases it's because it makes us feel superior, to mark us as beings of good taste, high intellect, or, at least, decent fashion sense. This last brings back memories of humiliation.

For a teenager in the 70's growing up in the Midwest, it was considered the height of poor fashion to wear jeans that showed even a bit of ankle. In fact, jeans were supposed to cover most of the top of one's shoe, and to drag behind so much that eventually the friction of one's heels would wear off a crescent of fabric in the back. My mother, being a practical woman, always bought me jeans that were well off the ground, so I walked the halls of my junior high school to near-constant ridicule from both girls and boys (this was pre-Michael Jackson, remember). As waves of scarlet passed fitfully across my face with every comment, I would rage inwardly, wondering why they cared so much about a couple inches of denim. In the entire scheme of the universe, or even of planet Earth, why did it matter?

Then there was Dale Devore. He was skinny, red-headed, freckled, and always had at least two inches of white sock showing above his sneakers. But he was cheerful and funny and never seemed to mind anything. One day, I was walking along behind him as the halls filled with students changing classes, and a big jock-type fellow remarked loudly to him, "I see you're waiting for the Flood" (this was a common remark, and pants like ours were dubbed "highwaters"). His friends guffawed. Without missing a beat, Dale retorted, "Yep, and I'm gonna be ready for it, and you're all gonna get your pants wet!" The burly guy muttered something along the lines of "Loser!" or "You're such an asshole!" but all the steam had gone out of him; it was no longer fun teasing the weird kid. I think I fell in love with Dale at that moment.

(Later on, in high school, Dale was a DJ for our high school radio, which broadcast once a week for fifteen minutes. He got suspended once for locking the door to the broadcast station and blasting rock-and-roll for five minutes during first period. I wonder if he ever fulfilled his dream of becoming a real DJ. Where are you now, Dale?)

So one of my goals for the Second Half is to give up embarrassment, sort of like giving up smoking. It will be hard to do at first, and I'm sure I'll have many relapses, but I'll work on it a little every day. I want to revel in my geekiness, not to apologize for my tastes, such as liking songs by both Lady Gaga and John Denver, and to recognize that people who might ridicule me have a problem with their own self-esteem. Oh God, that sounds so pompous! I'm not really like that....