The Wilde Boy

Portrait of Baron Joseph Vialetes de Mortarieu – J.A.D. Ingres

The boy gets on the bus, a yellowed Penguin Classic in his hand. I’m drawn to notice him first because of the book and then because of his face. He looks like something from another era – dark, tousled curls, an open smiling face — patrician, like a 19th century painting.

He sits down in the sideways seat in front of me. He’s maybe in his late teens, yet he has no electronic device of any sort plugged anywhere into his person. He has no visible piercings or tattoos. His shoes are tied, his shorts fit.

He opens the book, the faded Penguin, his dark eyes fix instantly on the page. 

I wonder what he’s reading with such enthusiasm.  It all seems so incongruous. I strain to read the tiny print in the header. It’s too small. I want to know what this boy is reading.

I tilt my head to the side and downward to try to get a glimpse of the front cover. I can’t.

I fetch my reading glass from my bag and pretend to read a scrap of paper I also find there and then surreptitiously look over to read the the page header of the boy’s book:  The Importance of Being Ernest.

I stare at the boy in wonder.

He smiles to himself as he reads; chuckles once or twice, quietly.

He turns the page. His face lights up and he actually slaps his knee and laughs out loud.  Not too loud. No one else has noticed.  He looks up, face beaming with joy. He looks around as if seeking someone with whom to share what he has just experienced.

“You’re really enjoying that.” I state, obviously, smiling back.

“Oh, ya! It’s great!” He says, eagerly, in a soft, well-modulated voice.  He goes on to try to explain why he’s enjoying it. He stumbles all over his words as too many thoughts tumble out. He’s not very clear and seems to want to tell me, in one breath,  the entire story and how and why it has engaged him.

We chat briefly about Oscar Wilde; his blithe flippancy; his dark cynicism. The boy is too excited to get into much of a discussion, though. He longs to get back to the book.

 “Are you reading this for fun or for a class?” I have to know before he’s lost in the story again.

 “Oh, fun!” he answers, nodding his head enthusiastically.

“I can’t remember the last time I saw a Penguin out in public.” I murmur, mostly to myself.  I watch him read until we get to his stop. He smiles and nods good-bye.

Kids these days.

Something to scare mommy bloggers

Say what you will about young people these days, but you have to give them credit for style.

In decades past teenagers tended to all look alike. There were usually two groups: the good students/jocks; and the rebels. Each group had a dress code, a hairstyle code and an accessory code and most kids stayed pretty much within those boundaries.  

Today, teenagers seem to be so much more creative and individualistic in their styles – or maybe it’s because they have so many more options than kids in the past. So much more music (which usually defines hair and clothing styles) and so much more stuff in general. Look at all the products and hardware that are available just for hair.

Of course, teenagers still work within some form of boundary, but there seems to be a lot more leeway for personal expression. My daughter and some of her friends are into a style called, Scene.

 Scene apparently evolved from emo.  Emo is kind of dark, self-destructive and depressing, but shouldn’t be confused with goth, which I think spawned emo, and is also dark and depressing. Anyway,  a lot of parents freak out when their kids start going goth or emo. And I can understand that.

Some parents also freak out when their kids go Scene. And I’ve heard negative things about it — mainly that Scene kids get all superior and uppity and super-self absorbed.  But that mainly just sounds like teenagehood to me and all in all, I think they look kind of cute.

I don’t really see the connection to the whole goth/emo thing because Scene is bright (very), positive, and cheerful. So, really it’s kind of anti-emo in my books, but then maybe I’m not completely hep to the Scene scene.

What I do know is that in general, Scene kids are into indie and retro music: 80’s new wave or classic rock, but there aren’t any hard and fast rules about that.  They’re very arty – into photography (love to take pictures of themselves and paste them all over Facebook or MySpace), creative writing, visual arts.  They love tattoos and piercings (no, my daughter will not be having either). And they often have a passion for animal rights and other tree-huggy stuff.

Superficially they have, choppy haircuts often dyed black or with colored stripes. They use lots of bright make-up — pinks, purples, blues and thick black eyeliner.  They wear tight, skinny pants/leggings and very bright colors, band or kids t-shirts (also very tight). Lots of bright, colourful accessories – bows, beads, belts, big, big sunglasses.

Bonus:  Though  there are mall boutiques that sell some of this stuff, a lot of the best Scene gear can be found in thrift and vintage shops.

Drawback: Scene kids spend a LOT of time on Facebook.

Bonus: I’ll have one hilarious photo album to embarass her with for the rest of her life once she grows out of this.

 Here are some photos of Scenesters. Some I pilfered from the internet and some are of my daughter.  I didn’t want  her to be too identifiable, so the selection was limited.

 

 

Taking Back the Pizza

THAT WAS THEN

I didn’t have my first slice of pizza until I was 12. I know, it’s shocking, but I was a weird foreign kid and my mother made all our meals and they were regular, traditional, old-country fare.

My introduction to pizza happened at a birthday party for a classmate named, Paul. Paul was a very brainy science/math type and not very sociable, so I was surprised he was even having a party. Turns out I was the only girl invited to the party.

Paul was very nice and made me really, really welcome.  He suddenly had a ton of things to talk to me about.  He showed me all his collections and stuff he’d built and experiments he was working on and told me all his hopes and dreams for the future. But he was gentlemanly about it and asked my opinion on everything and dragged my whole, short life story out of me while he was at it.

 He was amazed, for instance, that I’d never had pizza and made sure that my first time was a good experience.  He told me what pizza was made of and gave me a bit of pizza history. He assured me that if I didn’t like the pizza, I didn’t have to eat it and he’d get me something else. He took me right over and showed me how full their fridge and cupboards were of other food options.

I can’t remember what the rest of his party guests were doing while Paul and I toured his home and his life, but I guess they must have been kept occupied by his mother or brothers or something.

The pizza was great, of course – good old pepperoni and cheese pizza. He was thrilled to see me enjoying it. Then he was distressed to find that while I was working my way through my inaugural slice, the boys had snarfed down the rest of the pizza.  So, I only got once piece, but that was okay.   

 Some time after the eating of the pizza, Paul and I shared a kiss. The kiss, (a quick peck really) was a first for both of us and tasted of pepperoni. We smiled at each other afterwards and trotted off to have cake.

It was many years before I had pizza again though I nagged my parents incessantly.

I thought of pizza often during the intervening years.

Pizza didn’t become a regular part of my life until Joe, my high-school boyfriend.  When the weather was too bad to be outdoors and/or whenever we didn’t have enough money to go out, we’d spend Sunday afternoons in Joe’s rec room.  We’d go get a pepperoni pizza from Julio’s, take it back to his house with a couple of Cokes and watch some quality Sunday afternoon TV.  Then we’d make out for a while before I had to go home.

For a very long time the smell, taste or even idea of pepperoni pizza sparked a bit of teenage lust in me.  It may still.

THIS IS NOW

Last night I got a flyer in the mail advertising shawarma pizza.  It has shawarma meat products on it, shawarma sauce and shawarma toppings.  To me this makes it a shawarma, not a pizza.  Just because it’s on round, flat dough instead of rolled up in round flat dough doesn’t make it pizza.

Originally pizza was just flattened bread dough with olive oil, tomatoes and mozzarella cheese and maybe some basil.  Anchovies and mushrooms were also acceptable additions.

Pizza has only been in North America for about 50 years and for a long time was only available in Italian neighbourhoods.  As soon as it left the hood, however, some bad things started to happen to pizza.

People began to pretend that they could throw anything on flat bread (not even pizza dough, necessarily) and call it pizza – chicken masala, fried eggs, lobster, tuna, broccoli, peas, roasted cauliflower, hamburger, smoked gouda, bbq pork,  fruit, nuts — and I don’t even want to talk about “stuffed crust”. (berk!)

I don’t know, but I think it may be time to reclaim pizza. If you want to eat all sorts of stuff on flat breadish things, call it something else. This stuff is probably all wonderful and fabulously delicious, so it really deserves its own special name.

Pizza (and all those love it) should take a stand and say: “No More!  Pizza is made with pizza dough, olive oil,  tomatoes or tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and maybe one other simple, traditional topping (e.g.: pepperoni, mushrooms or anchovies).”

What I Did Mother’s Day Weekend

Friday

The child had a friend over and they went to the park across the street to hang out with boys. So I hung out with my friend, P. We ate jalapeño chips and drank just a teensy bit too much wine.

Then the child and her friend came back and facebooked or msned or whatever they do that requires a lot of high-pitched squealing and giggling.

They kept that up long after I’d fallen asleep.

Saturday

Bazel woke me at the crack of dawn and we had a nice quiet breakfast and read the paper together until the squealing teenagers woke up at ten demanding to be fed. “Ha ha,” I said. “Make your own breakfast. I have other plans.”

I know. I’m a horrible mother – letting her hang around parks with boys, drinking around her, not constantly supervising her internet usage, leaving her to fend for herself for breakfast, but, oh well, she can take it up with her therapist when she’s 30.

So, anyway, I made my way over to Preston Street where I was meeting the ever sparklingly effervescent Zoom for brunch at Stoneface Dolly’s. We had delightful egg dishes, some very large tumblers of Beau’s and then wandered aroundLittle Italy. .

As you’ll discover over on Zoom’s blog, we ended up stumbling into some tulip-related festivities. Zoom has posted some of the gorgeous photos she took.

I’d never been to Ottawa during Tulip Festival and couldn’t imagine traveling here just to see tulips, but they are pretty and flowery and almost as colorful as the many, many people who apparently did travel to see tulips.

I took the O-Train for the first time, too. I love the O-Train. I wish the O-Train would go more places that I need to go so I could take the O-Train all the time. I didn’t want to get off the O-Train. I want to marry the O-Train. I think the O-Train likes me, too. We went through a tunnel!!

After the O-Train, I went for a hair cut. Nothing drastic, just a general cleaning up so I look less like a crazy cat lady. Eventually I went home.

That night I dreamed of the O-Train.

Sunday

Sunday, Bazel woke me up at the crack of dawn, pointing out that the day promised to be a lovely one. We had breakfast and read the paper. Then I watched Coronation Street, (yawn).

My darling daughter, who’s life I’m, like, totally ruining by not dancing attendance on her when, (and only when), she wants me to, gave me this lovely painting for Mother’s Day. She’s the artist.

Then to heap on additional guilt, she also made the Sunday lunch – her famous vegetarian cannelloni. It was awesome.
After I watched her wash the dishes, scrub the pots, scour the kitchen and shovel ashes out of the hearth with a teaspoon, we went out to walk off the canneloni. We ran into some neighbours who were also walking off their Mother’s Day lunch. They talked us into coming with them for some beverages at a nearby coffee conglomarate whose doors I had so far managed not to darken and whose name starts with s.t.a.r. and rhymes with “sucks”.

And now I’m back home and trying to psych myself up to start preparations for another dynamic week of work and school.

And, that’s a slice of my weekend life. Hope ya’ll had a beautiful Mother’s Day Weekend.

Yute

When I was a teenager (back in the halcyon days of sex and drugs and rock & roll – when those things were still fun and not necessarily deadly) life was simple.

School was a place we went to meet our friends, skip from and attend dances at. Our parents gave us a place to live, fed us when we were home and pretty much left us alone. Life was about socializing and making a few bucks so you could have fun.

Sure, we had normal melodramatic anxieties that go along with burgeoning adulthood and hormonal flux, but there was very little that couldn’t be put right by a good house party filled with Southern Comfort, sensimilla and Pink Floyd.

Now, by a strange twist of fate, I find I’m the parent of a teenager. Life is definitely not simple anymore for teenagers. I feel obligated to be on her all the time about buckling down, getting good grades, doing her music lessons, getting volunteer work experience under her belt, participating in sports and other school activities.

These are the keys to success in the 21st Century. I hate it. I hate nagging her about it all the time. I feel sorry for her. I want her to have fun and spend her youth enjoying life. But then, with all the competition out there, she won’t get into university, which will limit her future and we’d all end up on Dr. Phil one day.

There are decades of slog ahead, why can’t she have these paltry few years of young adulthood to be free from all this pressure?

The only consolation is the hope that working hard now will give her the opportunity and freedom to spend the rest of her life doing something she enjoys rather than just something she has to do for 7.5 hours every day to keep herself in groceries.

I try to tell her (and myself) that, but it doesn’t seem to cut much ice when the heady rush of teenagehood is on her now.