Gone, her Sonia Rykiel sweaters. Her favorite Kenzo shirt. Gone, her new supply of Clinique. Her Maud Frizon shoes. Gone, her Charles Jourdan boots. Gone, her address book. Yes. Her address book. Gone. Gone. Gone.
Kimberly M. stands alone in the airline terminal. A solitary figure. Staring as the empty luggage carrousel goes round and round.
Kimberly M. has lost her luggage. Certainly you can spare some of your own.
REMEMBER THE GREEDIEST!
Parental Guidance
As the title suggests, this piece is intended for those among us who have taken on the job of human reproduction. And while I am not unmindful of the fact that many of my readers are familiar with the act of reproduction only insofar as it applies to a too-recently fabricated Louis XV armoire, I nevertheless feel that certain things cannot be left unsaid. For although distinctly childless myself, I find that I am possessed of some fairly strong opinions on the subject of the rearing of the young. The reasons for this are varied, not to say rococo, and range from genuine concern for the future of mankind to simple, cosmetic disdain.
Being a good deal less villainous than is popularly supposed, I do not hold small children entirely accountable for their own behavior. By and large, I feel that this burden must be borne by their elders. Therefore, in an effort to make knowledge power, I offer the following suggestions:
Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion-picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word “collectible” as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.
Children do not really need money. After all, they don’t have to pay rent or send mailgrams. Therefore their allowance should be just large enough to cover chewing gum and an occasional pack of cigarettes. A child with his own savings account and/or tax shelter is not going to be a child who scares easy.
A child who is not rigorously instructed in the matter of table manners is a child whose future is being dealt with cavalierly. A person who makes an admiral’s hat out of a linen napkin is not going to be in wild social demand.
The term “child actor” is redundant. He should not be further incited.
Do not have your child’s hair cut by a real hairdresser in a real hairdressing salon. He is, at this point, far too short to be exposed to contempt.
Do not, on a rainy day, ask your child what he feels like doing, because I assure you that what he feels like doing, you won’t feel like watching.
Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable expectations and eventual disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around the room with royal-blue chickens.
If you are truly serious about preparing your child for the future, don’t teach him to subtract—teach him to deduct.
Make every effort to avoid ostentatiously Biblical names. Nothing will show your hand more.
Do not send your child to the sort of progressive school that permits writing on the walls unless you want him to grow up to be TAKI 183.
If you must give your child lessons, send him to driving school. He is far more likely to end up owning a Datsun than he is a Stradivarius.
Designer clothes worn by children are like snowsuits worn by adults. Few can carry it off successfully.
Never allow your child to call you by your first name. He hasn’t known you long enough.
Do not encourage your child to express himself artistically unless you are George Balanchine’s mother.
Do not elicit your child’s political opinions. He doesn’t know any more than you do.
Do not allow your children to mix drinks. It is unseemly and they use too much vermouth.
Letting your child choose his own bedroom furniture is like letting your dog choose his own veterinarian.
Your child is watching too much television if there exists the possibility that he might melt down.
Don’t bother discussing sex with small children. They rarely have anything to add.
Never, for effect, pull a gun on a small child. He won’t get it.
Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he’s buying.
Tips for Teens
There is perhaps, for all concerned, no period of life so unpleasant, so unappealing, so downright unpalatable, as that of adolescence. And while pretty much everyone who comes into contact with him is disagreeably affected, certainly no one is in for a ruder shock than the actual teenager himself. Fresh from twelve straight years of uninterrupted cuteness, he is singularly unprepared to deal with the harsh consequences of inadequate personal appearance. Almost immediately upon entering the thirteenth year of life, a chubby little child becomes a big fat girl, and a boy previously spoken of as “small for his age” finds that he is, in reality, a boy who is short.
Problems of physical beauty, grave though they be, are not all that beset the unwary teen. Philosophical, spiritual, social, legal—a veritable multitude of difficulties daily confront him. Understandably disconcerted, the teenager almost invariably finds himself in a state of unrelenting misery. This is, of course, unfortunate, even lamentable. Yet one frequently discovers a lack of sympathy for the troubled youth. This dearth of compassion is undoubtedly due to the teenager’s insistence upon dealing with his lot in an unduly boisterous fashion. He is, quite simply, at an age where he can keep nothing to himself. No impulse too fleeting, no sentiment too raw, that the teenager does not feel compelled to share it with those around him.
This sort of behavior naturally tends to have an alienating effect. And while this is oftimes its major intent, one cannot help but respond with hearty ill will.
Therefore, in the interest of encouraging if not greater understanding, at least greater decorum, I have set down the following words of advice.
If in addition to being physically unattractive you find that you do not get along well with others, do not under any circumstances attempt to alleviate this situation by developing an interesting personality. An interesting personality is, in an adult, insufferable. In a teenager it is frequently punishable by law.
Wearing dark glasses at the breakfast table is socially acceptable only if you are legally blind or partaking of your morning meal out of doors during a total eclipse of the sun.
Should your political opinions be at extreme variance with those of your parents, keep in mind that while it is indeed your constitutional right to express these sentiments verbally, it is unseemly to do so with your mouth full—particularly when it is full of the oppressor’s standing rib roast.
Think before you speak. Read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn’t make up yourself—a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions.
Try to derive some comfort from the knowledge that if your guidance counselor were working up to his potential, he wouldn’t still be in high school.
The teen years are fraught with any number of hazards, but none so perilous as that which manifests itself as a tendency to consider movies an important art form. If you are presently, or just about to be, of this opinion, perhaps I can spare you years of unbearable pretension by posing this question: If movies (or films, as you are probably now referring to them) were of such a high and serious nature, can you possibly entertain even the slightest notion that they would show them in a place that sold Orange Crush and Jujubes?
It is at this point in your life that you will be giving the greatest amount of time and attention to matters of sex. This is not only acceptable, but should, in fact, be encouraged, for this is the last time that sex will be genuinely exciting. The more farsighted among you may wish to cultivate supplementary interests in order that you might have something to do when you get older. I personally recommend the smoking of cigarettes—a habit with staying power.
&n
bsp; While we’re on the subject of cigarettes, do not forget that adolescence is also the last time that you can reasonably expect to be forgiven a taste for a brand that might by way of exotic shape, color or package excite comment.
The girl in your class who suggests that this year the Drama Club put on The Bald Soprano will be a thorn in people’s sides all of her life.
Should you be a teenager blessed with uncommon good looks, document this state of affairs by the taking of photographs. It is the only way anyone will ever believe you in years to come.
Avoid the use of drugs whenever possible. For while they may, at this juncture, provide a pleasant diversion, they are, on the whole, not the sort of thing that will in later years (should you have later years) be of much use in the acquisition of richly rewarding tax shelters and beachfront property.
If you reside in a state where you attain your legal majority while still in your teens, pretend that you don’t. There isn’t an adult alive who would want to be contractually bound by a decision he came to at the age of nineteen.
Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.
Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.
At Home
with Pope Ron
It is a clear, crisp day, the sunlight glinting brilliantly off the spires of St. Peter’s Basilica—the entire scene as impressive and monumental as ever—but I scarcely notice as I make my hurried way across the square, for I am late for my interview and as any good journalist knows, popes don’t like to be kept waiting. I enter the Vatican breathlessly, take quick note of the really quite attractive Swiss Guard and make my way to the papal apartments, where I am to meet the man who has arranged this interview—the cardinal bishop closest to the pope.
“Hi,” says a tall, rather lanky fellow whom I would place in his very early thirties, “I’m Jeff Cardinal Lucas, but call me Jeff.” Jeff extends a friendly hand and I, not being a Catholic, am somewhat at a loss as to what to do. Just then I am rescued from what could easily have turned into an extremely embarrassing situation, by a husky masculine voice. “Jeff, Jeff, if that’s the girl from the magazine, tell her I’ll be with her in a minute. I’m just finishing up an encyclical.”
True to his word, sixty seconds later I am confronted by a tall, somewhat shaggy-haired man with startlingly long eyelashes and a ready, even impish, grin. “Hi,” he says in that hauntingly deep voice that I had heard only a minute before. “I’m the Supreme Pontiff, but call me Ron—everyone does.”
And much to my surprise I do, and easily, for Pope Ron’s genuine warmth is infectious. Soon we are sitting comfortably on a big, old, leather sofa chatting away as if we had known each other forever. Before too long, we are joined by Sue, the pope’s delicate blond wife of the pre-Raphaelite curls and long, tapering fingers, and Dylan, Ron’s boyish little son from his first marriage.
I check my tape recorder to make sure it’s working and ask Ron if he would like to start by telling me a little about his personal life, what he does to relax—to escape from the pressures of holiness and infallibility.
“Well,” says Ron, “I would first like to say that this is, after all, the new Church and things have really loosened up around here. I mean, I do try to adapt to others. To understand and consider points of view different from my own. To grow. To extend myself. To explore the various regions of thought. You know, I have kind of a motto that I found to be of tremendous use to me in this job. A motto that I think has done a lot to make the Church really relevant. In fact, Sue here liked it so much that she made me this.” Ron divests himself of his robe and reveals a white cotton T-shirt emblazoned in red with the legend INFALLIBLE BUT NOT INFLEXIBLE. “Of course,” continues the pontiff, “this is just the prototype. As soon as Sue is finished with the urn she’s working on now—you know, of course, that she’s really incredible with the potter’s wheel—she’s going to see about having them made up for the entire Sacred College of Cardinals.
“As for relaxation, well, one of the things I really like to do is work with my hands. I mean, it really humbles a man, even a pope, to have tactile contact with the raw materials of nature. See that scepter over there? It took me six months to carve it out of rosewood, but it was worth it because by making it myself I feel that it’s really a part of me, really mine.” At this, Sue smiles proudly and gives Ron’s ring a playful little kiss. It is easy to see what a terribly happy couple they are.
“I do other things too, things around the palace. Sue and I do them together, and even Dylan helps, don’t you, Dyl?” Ron asks paternally as he rumples his young son’s hair. “I mean, when we first moved in here you wouldn’t have believed it. Incredibly formal, incredibly elaborate, unbelievably uptight. And it’s such a big place really that we’ve barely made a dent. But one thing we have done—finished just last week, as a matter of fact, I mean Sue and I together, of course—was that we took the walls of the Sistine Chapel down to the natural brick, and now it really looks great, really warm, really basic.”
We sip a little mint tea, and watch with amusement as little Dylan tries on his father’s miter. I join in the gentle laughter as the large headdress falls over his little face. “Now for my next question, Ron, and I know you’ll answer me honestly, I mean that goes without saying. Is the pope Catholic?”
“Look,” he says, “if you mean me specifically, I mean me personally, yes, I am Catholic. But you know, of course, that this old bugaboo is no longer really applicable. The field is definitely opening up, and being Catholic really didn’t swing my election as pope. The Sacred College of Cardinals looks for someone open to God, someone at home with his or her own feelings, someone, you might say, who can communicate rather than just excommunicate—which is, after all, so negative, so the opposite of the type of actualization that I hope the Church now represents. Yes, the Church is opening up to every possibility, and I see no reason why we can’t expect in the not-too-distant future a Pope Rochester, a Pope Ellen, even a Pope Ira.”
“Pope Ira?” I ask. “Isn’t that a bit unlikely? A Jewish pope after the long Church history of saying that the Jews killed Christ?”
“Look,” Ron pontificates, “what’s past is past. You know we no longer blame the death of Christ on the Jews. I mean, obviously they were involved, but you have to look at things historically and nowadays the Church accepts the bull that I issued last year which decreed an acceptance of the fact that all they probably did was just hassle him, and that’s what my bull decreed; the Jews hassled Christ, they didn’t actually kill him.”
Much relieved, I ask Ron about the early years, the struggle years, the tough years that every young man with scepters in his eyes must endure—nay, triumph over—if he is to reach his lordly goal.
“Yeah,” says Ron, “it was rough, real rough, but it was fun too. I mean, I’ve done the whole thing, really gone the distance, from altar boy to the Big P. I’ve been there in the confessional listening to the little boys tell of impure thoughts. I’ve been there baptizing the babies—upfront so to speak.” He chuckles softly at his own joke. “I’ve run the bingo games, married the faithful, tended the flock. I was the youngest cardinal ever to come out of the Five Towns, and it wasn’t always easy, but I’ve had some laughs along the way and it was all worthwhile the night they elected me pope. I remember that night. It was warm and breezy and Pam and I—Pam was my first wife—stood together watching the smoke, waiting and waiting. Nine times, but it seemed like a million, until the smoke was white and I heard I’d made it. Jesus, it was beautiful, really beautiful.”
Ron brushes away the tears that sentiment has evoked, but he is obviously unashamed of real emotion, free from the repression that has so long constrained men. I mention this and Ron is pleased, even grateful, that I have noticed his supremacy over the old, uptight values that deny men the right to their feelings.
/> “Look,” he says dogmatically, and it is easy to see that the papacy has not been wasted on this man, “we’re all in this together, you know—I mean, Sue and I are partners. We discuss everything, and I mean everything. I wouldn’t consider issuing an edict without discussing it with her first. Not because she’s my wife, but because I respect her opinion; I value her judgment. Lots of things she does on her own, like instituting the whole-grain host. I mean, that was totally her thing. It was she who pointed out to me that for years the faithful had been poisoning their systems with overly refined hosts. And that was only one of the things she’s done. There are hundreds—I couldn’t possibly name them all. Yeah, Sue is really something else. I mean, she has definitely got the interests of the faithful at heart. You’ve got to believe me when I say she’s thinking of others all the time. She’s not just my lady, man; she’s our lady. And you can take it from me that that’s no bull, that’s strictly from the heart.”
The Modern-Day
Lives of the Saints
ST. GARRETT THE PETULANT (died 1974): Patron of make-up artists, invoked against puffiness and uneven skin tone.
Garrett was born in Cleveland in 1955, or so he claimed. His father was a factory worker who took little interest in his pale, delicate son. His mother, a pious woman who supplemented the family income by selling cosmetics door-to-door, was perhaps Garrett’s earthly inspiration.
The Fran Lebowitz Reader Page 15