Tip It!

by Maggie Griffin

  But you learn to weed out the bad stuff, and now even I like a lot of it. Like those Beatles. We grew to love them. [Well, during the “growing pains” phase of that love, I distinctly remember my mother had a “No White Album” rule when my aunt Irene came over, because of a little song called “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road.” It ain’t all “Hey Jude,” Ma.] Although somebody had to explain to me years later that “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was about drugs. I wouldn’t have known that in a million years. [Did you think it meant “Lucille Ball in the Sky with Diamonds”???]

  As for other big names, I never did like Elvis Presley. He was probably a decent guy underneath, but he just seemed like a hillbilly to me. [Did she just write “hillbilly”? Now I’m going to have to do damage control with the Hillbilly-American community.] Never bought his albums. Wasn’t nuts about his movies. We would just laugh at stuff like “Hound Dog.” [Just pictured my mom and dad sitting together in the foyer holding a 45 of “Hound Dog” and doubled over with laughter.] But his life turned out sad and pathetic. And that Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones? Never a favorite. He was too wild, and looked dirty half the time. [Ouch. I’m glad she’s not on the board of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.] And, oh God, not heavy metal. I don’t get that at all. I can’t even tell what they’re doing with the instruments. [She couldn’t name three heavy metal acts if you put a gun to her head.] And I never liked rap. There’s no singing. I don’t like the dirty ones, especially. Everyone’s a “bitch” and a “ho”? Whatever they’re saying, I know it isn’t nice. [Sorry, Luda.]

  Look, I’m not saying we didn’t have our funny, silly songs in the big band era, which is when I was growing up. But nearly all our music was romantic. [Nearly all is right, Mom. I don’t think songs from that era like “Shave ’Em Dry,” “It Ain’t the Meat (It’s the Motion)” or “Banana in Your Fruit Basket” qualified as “romantic.”] Songs were about the girl, finding her, not wanting to lose her, or if you lost her, getting her back! The music from my time was about longing for love, longing to keep someone. I loved it! [Don’t forget the longing for “fuckin’,” as blues pioneer Lucille Bogan repeatedly sings in her 1935 recording “Shave ’Em Dry,” which is dirtier than most gangsta rap. But I’m guessing Mom didn’t make it to any juke joints back then.] That’s what Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, Lena Horne, Rosie Clooney, and Frank Sinatra sang about: love and romance. Now, I’ll admit I never did like Sinatra’s personal life. But his talent, and the kinds of songs he performed? Wonderful!

  Plus, back then we wanted to hear a nice voice, something pleasing to the ear. You know what I hate about music now? You can’t hear the vocalist! The vocals get washed out by the darned drums [I looked it up, and she’s right on this one, drums were not invented until Elvis Presley was born] or the wild guitars or all the computer noises. Hey, when I listen to music, I want to hear somebody sing! And the other thing is, I can never understand the words, either. Ever. But the kids all sure know them. From listening to it constantly on their iPods. Maybe I don’t want to know the words to some of these songs.

  By the way, I don’t have an iPod. And I don’t want one. [NEWSFLASH: Apple stock plummets!]

  But getting back to what people in my day liked about music, what’s changed is that the romance is gone. These days all the songs seem to be against the girl. It’s crazy! I wish softer, prettier songs would come back. [Maybe a song titled “I’m Not Against a Soft and Pretty Girl”? By Beyoncé?] Then maybe young kids would realize it’s kinda nice to be in love. [Just ask young person Rihanna.] In a nice way. Girls could feel that a guy is gonna protect you, and love you, and think you’re the best person who ever lived. [That’s how stalkers think, Mom.]

  God, Yes, I Love Uniforms

  Now, if you want to see me go into a tantrum, talk to me about children’s clothes today. They’re so sexy, for God’s sake! These are kids we’re talking about! [Mom, cut it out. I’m thirty-two years old. Geez.] Everything on them now is so tight, and usually real short, and tries to emphasize what little bosom half of ’em have (or don’t have). [I’m confused. So now you’re pro implants for preteens?] I wish you could see me rolling my eyes now. I swear, these kids don’t get a chance to be teenagers anymore. They’re boosted into the adult stage of life way before they’re ready. [Admit it, that’s gotta hurt, Miley.]

  In my era, kids stayed kids until the first or second year of high school. Girls were still dumb and innocent and would giggle around the boys. [Thanks, Gloria Steinem.] Now the girls all act provocatively—thanks to these teen movies that drive me out of my mind [the last teen movie Mom saw having been Tammy and the Bachelor]—and the boys, well, I just want to slap them all in the face. [Calling my attorneys now.] They don’t need the temptation. Boys are bad enough as they are, for Chrissakes. The ones who wear their pants halfway down their legs are so stupid-looking, too, I don’t even know how they can think it’s attractive. It’s dumb. Dumb, I tell ya. [I have to admit, I get warm and fuzzy feelings inside every time I think of my mom and dad sitting me down, screaming at me, “ALL MEN ARE PIGS!”] And letting the kids wear caps in schools, that’s just so goofy. There’s no teaching kids these days how you should dress properly. I don’t think it’s asking a lot to teach them that.

  You might be able to tell from the above that I’m all in favor of uniforms. God, yes, I love uniforms. [Mom, you have no idea how many men reading this book also love a man in uniform.] They’re what my kids wore when they went to Catholic grammar school and high school, and it made all the sense in the world. It relieves the kid of figuring out what to wear, and it cuts everybody down to the same size. We may have all cried about them when we had to wear them, but when there’d be those few weeks when you’d go to school without uniforms—and no, I don’t mean without any clothes; you’d go in your own clothes while new uniforms were ordered—you were always glad when you had to go back to the uniform, because most of us didn’t have anymore clothes to wear! There’d always be those few girls who had tons of clothes, but as I said, uniforms really equalize everyone. They take the focus off fashion, and put it back where it should be, on being clean and decent and hard-working. [Here’s the deal: As a mom of five kids, clearly she liked us wearing uniforms because it was easier for her. And Maggie being the youngest of sixteen children, clearly her mother loved uniforms because it was easier. Got it?]

  Besides, kids nowadays are so obsessed with brands! Everything has to be a brand name. It kills me to buy a brand name. The reason young people want them is because of all the advertising they see, everywhere they go. In my day you didn’t have brand names. The papers would have advertisements that just showed you the dresses, or the jackets, and you didn’t see designer names. You knew the name Levi’s, I guess, for dungarees, and OshKosh B’Gosh, for overalls. But you wore those for manual labor. Guys never wore jeans for just hangin’ around, like they do today. I blame television.

  Home Entertainment Tonight

  Speaking of television, when Johnny and I started raising our family in the 1940s, television was new, and a pretty exciting thing to get, I have to say. When I was a child, home entertainment was a wireless radio you listened to, or the wind-up Victrola for playing records. And getting the Victrola that plugged in was a big deal. But when television arrived, that was great. We all watched it together as a family. Those early sets were terrible, though. Half the time your picture was snow. [If it was the news reporting a blizzard, you’d never know it.] If you got a picture, you’d watch anything, you were so thrilled. I remember friends of ours who were fascinated by just the signal screen, that card that just indicated you were getting a signal. They’d watch only that if they could. [Another glass of wine, anyone?]

  When the remote control came along, though, I have to say, I didn’t want that. It seemed awful to me not to just get up and go over to the set and change the channel myself! [My mother’s early version of a personal trainer.] I didn’t get remote controls at first. I thought, “Now, that’s
just pampering.” But I’m ashamed to admit, I love them now. Although these new remotes are more than a little confusing. There are so many buttons! What happened to just “On,” “Off,” “Volume,” and little arrows for going up and down the channels? I can’t figure these new ones out half the time. The other night I was trying to get to the Home and Garden network but somehow got stuck on Telemundo. [Busted. I went over there and put it on Al Jazeera and left. I gotta have a little fun with the old gal.] I gave up and just left it on there for the night. It begs the question, Why can’t I just have the channels I want? It’d be like going to a restaurant where they just bring out everything on the menu, and you’ve got to find your dish. Half the channels they give you aren’t even worth watching. Honestly. I watch Bravo, naturally, always wanting to see Kathy. And of course, Bill O’Reilly and Judge Judy. I like PBS. But so many network shows are nonsensical. The comedy is all toilet humor, suggestive and degrading. [Not unlike The O’Reilly Factor.]

  And what’s happened to the news? It’s all Hollywood stuff now. [That’s why it’s called Entertainment Tonight. Because the news is so fresh, it’s from TONIGHT.] It’s all a tabloid. They pay attention to stuff that isn’t even important! When I hear a newsman on a news show say, “The whole world is waiting to see if Brad and Angie are splitting!” Excuse me, but the whole world? With earthquakes happening? And wars going on? With the economy in the state it’s in? My God, I don’t think guys without jobs are waiting to see whether two movie stars are calling it quits. It’s just awful and sad.

  Not about Brad and Angie.

  About the news.

  Now that I think about it, my initial resistance to using the remote was also what happened with the clothes dryer. I never wanted one. I had a washing machine, and thank God, I was happy with only that, ’cause we had a good, warm basement, and a nice backyard. So hanging clothes was fine with me. [I’m filing a lawsuit against my mother for fraud right this minute. I cannot recall one instance when my mother described the joy of doing laundry. I seem to recall “Johnny, help me fold this gah-dammn laundry! Holy SHITE, why did we have five gah-dammn kids? I’m EXHAUSTED.” Or something to that effect.] They’d dry overnight, summer or winter. [You mean in Forest Park, Illinois, where the winters meant a wind chill effect of −17 degrees?] But when I got a dryer finally, there went that pleasant time outdoors in the sun, putting clothes on the line. Sometimes I’d get the urge and put clothes out anyway. But it was a new era: I’d gotten spoiled. Let the dryer do the work. All I have to do is fold ’em. That’s what we’ve come to. [Come to think of it, she and my dad were always big on hanging rags. To this day, you can go to my mom’s apartment, and no railing is safe.]

  Believe me, when I get these new contraptions like a remote or a dryer, I’m usually very happy eventually. But I’ll fight them at first. For as long as I can.

  All the New Technology, LOL

  You can probably guess how I felt about getting a computer. [Like bamboo shoots under your fingernails, maybe? Or worse???] One Christmas about ten years ago, Kathy surprised us. While we were out, she had one installed in our home. We knew she was expecting a call from us when we got home and saw this fancy new gadget, so we phoned her with excitement in our voices: “Oh my God, we got a computer!”

  And we were excited.

  But leery, too. Real leery. [Like a first date with a serial killer.]

  Because, see, it represented something we didn’t need. [Like information.] Why did I need a computer? “Oh, you’ll love e-mailing,” my kids would say. Well, I like to write cards. Cards somebody can in hold her hand, that say something nice you wrote with your own hand. And I like to talk to people personally on the phone. You want to hear people’s voices sometimes, you know?

  Not that I wanted a cell phone, either, when you started seeing everyone talking into one on the street. But even I had to admit they’re good to have for emergency purposes. I have a nice little cell phone myself now, although I still don’t know how to use the camera part. [Or the phone part. She screams into that damn cell phone like she’s mad at it. If you see her in a coffee shop, run.] And honestly, I don’t want to learn how to take a picture with it. Yet, what would I do if I saw Bill O’Reilly on the street? Oh geez.

  Now, though, it’s all about this texting, and tweetering. [It’s called twatting, Mom.] My daughter Joyce, who’s a wonderful teacher, said to me once, “It was hard enough to teach kids proper English and spelling when they didn’t have texting. Now what is it going to be like?” [Not to mention the semiautomatic weapons and the sexting and the cyberbullying.] Kids aren’t doing what I’m doing, which is consulting a dictionary every time I send an e-mail. [She’s describing spell-checking. She just doesn’t know it. There’s another computer setting she also does in real life. It’s called “sleep.” And she’s up to about sixteen hours a day.] There I am wondering, “Is that two ‘r’s?” while everyone else is writing “r u gng 2 lol” or whatever it is they abbreviate. It’s got to hurt the spelling cause.

  But Kathy and the rest of my kids have pulled me into the twenty-first century. When I first moved out to Los Angeles, whenever I’d see something in the Los Angeles Times that referred to Chicago, I would cut out the article and mail it to someone back in Chicago, who’d maybe copy it and give it to family members. [What she really did was compulsively clip articles from any and every periodical about anything slightly Chicago-related, and the occasional Dear Abby column, and mail them to me. Oh, and by the way, Mom, stop with the articles about beloved family dogs dying a slow and horrible death. To this day, she’ll send me a clipping from some old lady magazine titled something like “Saying Good-bye to Buster,” with her handwriting in the margins, “Does this sound like your dog or what?” Eww!! No!!] But when we got a computer, Joyce had to say to me, “Ma, don’t bother with the clippings. They can get the article on the Internet. Just e-mail them where it is, then they can call you and say, ‘Oh, I read that article.’ ” That certainly saved a lot of postage. [By the by, nothing pisses off old people more than stamps going up a penny.] Of course, I don’t really like reading newspapers on the computer. My eyes aren’t that good.

  I may have started out leery, but you can probably tell where this is going. Whaddaya know, like everything else, I got to using that computer, e-mail and everything, and now I’m pretty decent at it. [If you consider calling the computer “a yellow pages that moves” getting pretty decent at it.] But I have to say, what’s this obsession with getting new computers when the one you have works just fine? [She’s got me there. I never really got over my Sharp Wizard.] The kids wanted me to get a brand-new computer recently, because every time any of them was over here, they’d go nuts using the e-mail because it was so slow. “Well, it’s fine for me,” I’d say. “I’m not going anywhere anyway!” [Why does that make it okay to wait AN HOUR for an e-mail to send?]

  Then Kathy got me a new one, and of course I love it. So much for “use it up, wear it out, make it do.” Although when it heats up, I swear it’s going to burst into flames. Do you think it will? I’m telling you, I’m afraid of these things. Are they really supposed to get that hot? It’s like a radiator sometimes. [Why don’t you dry your laundry on it?]

  I guess the true indication of how much I’ve changed is that I’m even—gulp—sending e-mail cards now. I swear, sometimes I think I’m getting to be a bad person! What’s happening to me? [Okay, this is embarrassing. I don’t know how to send an e-mail card. Touché, Mom.]

  Old-School Discipline

  Sometimes, though, you have to look at what’s always been accepted and maybe make some change yourself. Especially if it’s about taking care of your kid.

  My kids all went to Catholic grammar school. Three of them even went to Catholic high school (not Kathy, who insisted on public school) [Thank you, Jesus], and two went to Catholic colleges all the way through. And the one thing that Catholic schools did was instill manners and discipline in you. Those are two things all kids need, be
lieve me. Parents need all the help we can get where discipline is concerned. I was happy with the Catholic schools. But what those schools typically meant was, you never blamed a nun or a priest for anything. And you certainly never went home and told your parents if you thought you were getting a bad shake, because they’d just say, “You’re supposed to do what you’re told, so behave yourselves.” My dad wouldn’t even listen to us if we griped about what went on at school. You might just get in more trouble if you did!

  But what’s most important, I came to realize, is sticking up for your kids when they’re right, and once, I did have occasion to talk to a nun about Kathy. This was when she was in sixth grade, maybe seventh. A mother of one of her classmates called me one day and said, “Marge, I want to tell you something, and I think you should do something about it. It’s about Kathy.”

  This surprised me. Kathy? My skinny, happy, curly-haired little cutie? See, I’d never had a single phone call about Kathy all through school so far. She was a wonderful kid. Really. As I always say, I’ve had more trouble with her as an adult than as a kid. [It’s called being a late bloomer.]

  Anyway, this mother said her daughter had come home from school and told her that if this one nun didn’t stop picking on Kathy, she was going to stand up and really tell off that nun. “I’m gonna really tell her,” this child was telling her mom. “I’m gonna say, ‘Leave Kathy alone! All you do is pick on her!’ ”

  I knew nothing about any of this. But apparently, it was bad enough that this nun would have Kathy crying and everything! Well, once I’d heard this from the mother and her daughter, I decided I had to call the nun that night. I gave it a lot of thought. It hurt me so much, I had to call. But boy, did it weigh on me. A whole lifetime of believing that you didn’t talk back to teachers, nuns, priests, neighbors, or anyone in authority was rearing its head. But then there was the thought of Kathy, never even telling me what she’d been going through. That was what hurt so much.