Amateur Hour

by Kimberly Harrington

  These are more or less the same words they have said to me dozens of times in the past. When they were younger. When I wouldn’t listen.

  Now that they are dipping their toes into social media and looking for their own content to share, it’s jarring how often I’m even tangentially included in a photo or a video that I didn’t know they were taking and I screech, “Delete that now! Don’t you dare post that!” I can’t help but feel sheepish, knowing the tables are very much turned, that they deserved that same autonomy and power over their image and their lives.

  When you get right down to it, I felt that their likenesses, their words, their quips, and sadness all belonged to me. Maybe I felt that way because at one point, they were me. And then, once they were born, I poured everything I had into them. The hours of mothering are long and tedious. So when those moments of joy, beauty, laughter, and utter nonsense would bubble up, I wanted to hold them up. I thought those moments were all mine to share.

  Randomly throughout the years, they have been approached at barbecues and on beaches, at houses of friends even hours away from where we live, by people they’ve never met, and those strangers have repeated back to them moments in their lives. Riding a horse for the first time, going on vacation, finishing school. How fucked up is that? Moments in their lives when just the two or three or four of us were present, were opened up to five hundred other people. Without their consent.

  And yet here’s the thing: when I page back through these tens of thousands of photos and hundreds of videos, I see not just their lives but our lives, together. The stuffies and favorite shoes I had forgotten about, and just how little they used to be. There are the snowflakes-on-eyelashes in December and the mud-pie making in August. These are the small moments, the unposed moments. The long drives and the missing teeth. These are moments that would’ve been lost to me, guaranteed. I like having evidence of these moments.

  One time I was paging through the previous year’s worth of photos as I hastily assembled a calendar for a Christmas gift. As I edited my way through the months, past the sledding in February and Easter-egg hunts in April, Maine in the summertime and apple pies in September, I whispered to myself, “We have a good life. We have had a good life.”

  My childhood was anonymous. Almost all of ours were. And I have raised my kids publicly. Not transparently, but publicly. I’m not sure what I will tell them if they ask me why I did that, why all of us did that, what was the point? It’s difficult to navigate something you have only experienced as an adult, something you did not grow up with and therefore don’t have the same developmental experience of.

  I suppose I will be honest with them. I will tell them that documenting them in all these ways made me proud, made me laugh, allowed me to connect with other parents and family and friends who were far away. It also drove me to make terrible and selfish decisions, because I lost sight of who they were and the rights they had. Because I was so deep in a second adolescence, where I was desperately seeking validation and approval. Where I did what everyone else did, more than everyone else did, so that it would all reflect back on me without consideration for how they might feel.

  I will tell them there is no easy answer. That on one hand I’m sorry, I made some appalling mistakes, I will do better. And that on the other, I’m happy I have all those pictures of them. I can’t regret that. I will tell them that sharing is what we all learned to do in kindergarten, but this newish form of sharing is the furthest thing from that spirit. When we are young we are taught to share to form community, to even out resources, and to feel good through giving. Now we are enticed to share to build ourselves up at the expense of others, like by like, into a castle with no foundation. A castle built on clouds.

  Thank You for Including Me on This Meal Train but Unfortunately I’m a Horrible Person

  Hello, practically a stranger!

  Although I’ve only seen your name under the People You May Know tab on Facebook, it seems you’ve roped me into a social obligation from which there is no graceful escape. I’m sure you assumed—since I’m a good friend of our mutual friend—that I share her more wonderful qualities like kindness, culinary skills, and the ability to find joy in feeding others. Well, would you believe I don’t possess any of those? You would if you actually knew me.

  I want this to be a learning experience for both of us but mainly for you. So I’m responding with a multiple-choice quiz that you may take at your leisure. Should I invite some of your tangential acquaintances to take it too? Maybe while they’re at it they could make you a meal and feel resentful about it? Anyway, I hope you’ll find this quiz useful, at least more useful than I plan on being in this lifetime.

  Can You Correctly Guess My Reactions to Being Added to This Fucking Meal Train?: A Quiz

  1. I couldn’t help but notice you’ve included me on this Meal Train for a mutual friend of ours who just:

  Had a baby.

  Suffered a death in the family.

  Wait, what happened? Seems if I don’t even know what happened, I’m probably not close enough friends with this person and therefore should definitely, definitely not be on this Meal Train. How did you find me?

  Bought a house. Did it not come with a kitchen? Seems like a buyer-beware situation to me.

  I literally don’t care.

  2. Of course my first reaction was:

  Uuuuuuuggggggghhhhhhhhh NO. No!

  Bitch, I can’t even properly prepare meals for my own family as it is.

  Maybe I never saw this.

  I’m gonna act like I never saw this.

  I did not see this.

  3. Then reality struck and I:

  Forced myself to add some cheerful comment as confirmation I have received this fucking thing. Ugh, fuck this fucking thing.

  Momentarily deluded myself for five whole minutes by believing I can actually do this—Look at me everyone, I’m turning over a new leaf! One where I make a complete and delicious meal as a gesture of support and non-assholeness on behalf of my friend in need! I am a good person!

  I am not a good person.

  Accepted that even my kids know I don’t say, “I love you and I’m here for you” with food. It’s more like, “Maybe you could stay alive for another day?”

  Clapped twice and summoned the pizza menus.

  4. And finally, I:

  Will wait as long as possible to commit to a date, hoping whatever the issue is has resolved itself by then.

  Will text with other horrible people about our shared Meal Train rage. Trust me, it’s a thing.

  Will sheepishly search for articles about Meal Train etiquette because if I’m going to do this, I’m not gonna lose face over it. Fuck that shit.

  Will flip out when I realize the meal needs to be dairy-free. What in the ever-loving Christ?

  Will order pizza anyway in a shot-heard-round-the-world act of sabotage that broadcasts, “I’m obviously not very good at this, and I might possibly even accidentally kill people, so maybe no one should include me on one of these things ever, ever again.”

  5. And then I spent a few days attempting to think deeply on this act of forcible community support and why it made me so nuts. Turns out I could think shallowly about it and end up at the same place, which was:

  I see a lot of women’s names on these things. And by “a lot of women’s names” I mean only women’s names. Meal Trains, bake sales, potlucks, all those kitchen-y bake-y cook-y things. Is this what the 1950s were like? Because if so, I’m here to tell you the 1950s sucked.

  Do men not know how to plan and cook a meal? The fact that out of over one hundred Michelin three-star restaurants only six have female chefs certainly tells me otherwise. Or do men only know how to cook the fancy, prestigious meals that come with press coverage?

  Do there really need to be etiquette articles about this whole mess? How not only is the straight-up donation of one’s time, money, and effort not good enough but you should also really try to switch up the meal choices, do
something not only unexpected but also excellent and something everyone from two years old to their great-grandparents will like. Guaranteed. Don’t drop off dishes that need to be returned, bring enough food for everyone but not too much or there won’t be any room left in the refrigerator, oh and maybe bring flowers or a gift for the oldest kid and definitely some ice cream and WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT? Do you want help or not? Maybe we could all chip in and buy you a restaurant and a farmers’ market instead? Maybe for your birthday you could tell me everything you don’t like in advance and then afterward tell me everything that was wrong with the gift I gave you?

  Stop. Assuming. All women. Cook. Or have the time to cook. OH MY GOD.

  I told you I was horrible.

  ANSWER KEY: All. Especially e’s. Unsubscribe.

  Your Participation Trophies Are Bullshit

  It was the end of horseback-riding camp and my daughter clip-clopped over to me in her dirt-and-manure-encrusted boots. She held up her two ribbons, one red and one blue. She singled out the blue one and said, “You don’t like this one, do you?”

  “Of course I don’t. You got that one just for breathing.”

  She knows how I feel about awards or ribbons or trophies or certificates or shout-outs just for the sake of recognizing a child is among the living and has managed to drag his or her carcass to camp, to a game or practice, to the play, to class, through life. I don’t know where this whole thing started, but I don’t like it.

  I thought this was something that sprung up in the 90s and we all made fun of now. I actually thought we were over it, especially in this age of resilience and grit and other Super-Important Parenting Buzzwords. But then my kids signed up for the elementary school play and I had to attend the mandatory parent meeting. If there’s one thing I can’t get enough of it’s mandatory parent meetings. Especially the kind that happen at night, right around dinnertime. Oh baby.

  I sat there leafing through multiple handouts, a complicated calendar, and rules containing several points of EMPHASIS IN UNDERLINE, BOLD, AND ALL CAPS. My kids were only in fourth and fifth grade, not on Broadway. Couldn’t they just throw on an old cat costume and call it a day? Maybe one of them could be a sun, I don’t know.

  As the women leading the meeting made clear, every kid who wanted to be in the play would be in the play. Every kid would have a role. We’re talking more than a hundred kids. Every kid in fourth and fifth grade would get speaking lines, guaranteed. They had counted all the lines in the script and divided them by grade and number of kids. The higher grades getting more lines and singing solos and the lower grades getting the smaller parts. But! No one should emphasize big versus little speaking roles. All roles were important. There are no big parts!

  Um. But. There are big parts.

  I took it all in, thinking back on my own experiences of participating in plays in school. I had to take both hands and push my jaw back up into place. I looked around the room so I could lock eyes with other like-minded parents. We’d definitely give each other that look that said, “WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?” There was no way I could be the only one bewildered by the fact there’d be three Simbas and three Nalas. Why was every supporting character in The Lion King exploded into a gang of multiples with rhyming names? What was even happening here?

  I looked around the room, scanning faces for that look of recognition and I saw . . . nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a face turned toward mine, not a single parent who looked surprised or upset by this information. In fact, several had their notebooks out or their phones open to a notes app as they jotted down the dictated information. Some asked follow-up questions like, “When you say ‘small’ role, how many lines would that be?” or “Number of lines–wise, what is the difference between a small and medium speaking part?”

  WHAT ARE YOU EVEN SAYING? My Chipotle order is ready, let’s wrap this fucking cuckoo fest up.

  When I returned home, I dumped my color-coded printouts, the calendar, the permissions slips, and all the rules out onto the kitchen counter.

  “This is absurd. Do you realize you have a speaking part no matter what?”

  “Yes!” my daughter answered brightly.

  “No,” I went on. “That’s just so wrong. So wrong! That’s not how plays work in the real world. That’s not how anything works in the real world. You’re supposed to try out for a play. The kids who are the best actors or actresses and singers get the best and biggest parts. Oh, I forgot, there are no big parts,” I added sarcastically.

  She just shrugged. For some reason kids don’t love monologues.

  I know this participation-trophy approach didn’t start with this particular theater company, and it didn’t start with the owners of the horse farm where my daughter attended camp. Schools and organizations—anyone dealing with kids—have been trained by almost three decades of parents to recognize children blindly and equally. No matter how much they suck.

  We do our children a disservice when we support this narrative. When we tell them they’re great at everything, excellent at whatever they attempt, good job! Kids are smart. They look to us for truth. When we tell them something that doesn’t totally jibe with their perception and experience, what does that say about us? That, at the minimum, we’re kind of liars?

  I’m not suggesting we come at them boot camp-style and scream about everything they’re terrible at. What I am suggesting is we take steps to free our teachers, schools, camp leaders, coaches, instructors, other parents, and culture (pretty easy, right?) from enforcing this fairy tale that every kid is exceptional and perfect. Because it is not true. You know it; I know it. Everyone knows it. Kids definitely know it. They can pick out which kid is the killer soccer player, an incredible artist, a big-time reader. Saying “So are you!” isn’t just wrong, it belittles true achievement.

  Sure, everyone should be able to take a crack at something they’ve never tried before. This is what ultimately made me back off my school-play flip-out. I had to recognize I was comparing elementary school with high school—clearly not a fair comparison. Every kid in elementary school should get a chance to be in a play. Does it have to be a play where a production truck is parked outside the gym during tech-rehearsal week? Debatable. I’m not sure I even heard the phrase tech rehearsal before my junior year of high school. But every kid certainly deserves a shot to create, to compete, and to push themselves in whatever way they choose.

  They should also be able to trust that when they win something, they have won it fair and square—through studying hard, loads of discipline, or lots of practice. They should be able to own it deep in their bones. They should know it’s real.

  Yet even when kids know the truth, they can of course become groomed over time to expect our empty praises. Who doesn’t like to hear good things about themselves? I know I do. We also fell into the “good job!” trap when our kids were little. Recently, as my daughter and I cleaned out her room and sorted through stacks upon stacks of old drawings—making piles for recycling, for her to keep, for me to keep—she was offended when I would send anything to the recycling graveyard. Sure, part of that is she knows I’m nostalgic and would save everything if I could. But another part of this whole mess is she’s still used to being praised for whatever she does. For making so much as a crooked line across a piece of paper. Because we have done it, other parents have done it, her teachers have done it, our culture has done it. We are good job–ing kids right into incompetency.

  When she first tried horseback riding—something that is a hobby of the rich for a reason, as we have painfully discovered—we were fortunate to find a tough teacher. She’s around my age and doesn’t have children. I think that part is important. And she doesn’t teach a ton of kids; it’s not a kid-centric farm, another key factor. She is a horse person; she takes horses seriously. She takes the care of them seriously. And she knows firsthand if you fuck around when it comes to horses, you can find yourself in a world of hurt.

  My daughter was finishing up her very fi
rst attempt at tacking up her horse and Mary, her instructor, commented, “Okay, so you say you’re done. Can you tell me that is absolutely the best job you can do? That animal is depending on you to do your best.”

  D-A-M-N. I was standing behind Mary, and my daughter and I exchanged a look like we had both been punched in the face. But that punch felt good to me. I realized as much as I thought I was trying to back away from overly praising her every breath and move, I needed to relearn what real talk was. It wasn’t about breaking anyone down or being needlessly cruel. It was about introducing the concept that there are standards. That life is a process of rising up to meet those standards. That hard work is essential to building confidence and feeling capable. And, most important, there is always more to learn. We can always get better at whatever it is we do.

  My daughter has slipped up only a few times since then. She has learned to be meticulous with her horse. Because she has been introduced to those expectations. And Mary isn’t going to get in there and help her do it. She doesn’t care that my daughter’s eleven and her mom is standing right there. Not her problem. She trusts that my daughter can do it, and after feeling a bit adrift without all that supervision and hand-holding, my daughter could do it herself. She had been pushed beyond her comfort zone and rose to the challenge. Maybe it wasn’t the most difficult challenge in the world, but it was one more step in what should be a lifelong journey of building competency.

  And while kids deserve to experience true competition as well as discover what they are uniquely good at, it’s just as valuable for them to know where and when to cut bait.