Observation or Perception?

Recently I've realized that I'm really not a very observant person. I feel like the words "I didn't notice" come out of my mouth far too frequently. I wanted to improve my observation skills, since I make my living (however scant) by writing and I have this perhaps misguided idea that writers should be observant.

Merriam-Webster defines observation as "an act of recognizing and noting a fact or occurrence" and observant as "paying strict attention." The words watchful and perceptive are also listed and it made me think about the connection between observation and perception. 

Not long ago, I noticed a disconnect between what I perceived and what really was. I had been interacting with an individual for months and had seen this person a number of times. It wasn't until the third or fourth meeting that I noticed the person did not have a right hand. In all my time with them, I had failed to observe this fact and instead perceived nothing different. 

I'm not the only one that does this. A few years ago, I was talking with a co-worker (a physician) who asked how tall I was. We had worked together for almost two years and he was shocked when I said I was 5'2. He said he'd never perceived me as being that short (his words, not mine) and supposed I had enough personality to make me seem taller.


To perceive is "to regard as being such," and that is exactly what my co-worker and I did, we perceived based off of a total observation. He wasn't seeing just my height and I wasn't even registering this person's hand, instead we were viewing the person as a whole. As I thought about the distinction, I decided that maybe I didn't need to be more observant. I like my "perception" much better, likely because it represents things the way I want them to be. I wouldn't consider this "rose-colored glass" way of looking at things the best way to move through life, but it's served me pretty well for the last 33 years and I don't think I'm going to rock the boat. 

Who is your favorite author?

I usually dread when someone asks me a "favorite" question because I can never seem to think of an answer. What is your favorite TV show is particularly difficult because I have a small child and a husband, which means we are usually watching football or Curious George. I've learned to appreciate both of those (actually I really like Curious George) but they are not my first choice. So I don't have a current favorite TV show, which is strange for someone that had two TVs and two TiVos in a studio apartment.I usually just look like an idiot as I fumble around trying to think of what shows are still playing in prime time.

When people start the "what is your favorite game," they usually focus on TV or movies or sports teams. These are all difficult for me (except for sports teams if college is included because of course the answer is CAROLINA). But if you ask me who my favorite author is I have absolutely no problem answering, hands down, unequivocally it is Madeleine L'Engle.

Like most people, I was first introduced her by reading A Wrinkle In Time. The book is a classic and I'm horrified to learn how many people haven't read it. This Newbery Medal winning young adult novel explores the ideas of time and space while dealing with family relationships. It is a fantastic read, along with the other books that make up the time quartet. (I will not get into the trilogy/quartet discussion here, but I feel I must acknowledge the heated debate surrounding the books included in the series.) The sad thing is, lots of people who have read A Wrinkle in Time don't realize how many books Madeleine L'Engle wrote over the course of her career. And beyond that, view her as only a young adult writer when many of her best works were non-fiction and adult novels.

I do realize that, having chosen L'Engle as my favorite makes me somewhat biased, but I can't help but sing the praises of a writer that makes me want to be a better person, explore my relationship with God and communicate more eloquently all with a single paragraph. Right now I'm reading The Irrational Season one of The Crosswicks Journals. I've had these books for years. This one was actually given to me in 2000 and sat on my shelf when I was single, following me to seven homes in the last eleven years. I fully believe that I just wasn't ready for it before, I hadn't lived enough life to appreciate what she has to say about love and marriage and motherhood. But now...WOW, I feel like these words written the year I was born are exactly what I need to hear right now.

What amazes me is no matter which of Madeleine L'Engle's books I pick up and decide to read, it is the exact right book for that time in my life. As a writer, she is able to weave a story that entertains, educates and challenges the reader; she doesn't talk down to her audience, even with her young adult works, and I always put down her books with the desire to learn more.

It makes me sad each time I remember that she passed away and there will be no more books. I won't know what happened to the Austins or the Murrays, nor will I have a chance to read more about her first-hand experiences. But what I can do is continue to read what she has written, taking from each something new every time, no matter how many times I've read it before. And I can share with others how much I enjoy her work, and give them the opportunity to discover what Madeline L'Engle has to say to them. And that is something I imagine she would have liked...

Are all two-year olds psychotic?

I have a two-year old boy. For most people, that statement can be taken at face value, "You have a son and he is two." Others, those who have not blocked the experience of having a two-year old boy, will wisely nod their heads and say, "Yes sister, we understand your pain."

Don't get me wrong, I love my son. He is this amazing, cuddly, smart, giggly little bundle of boy. He breaks my heart into pieces on a regular basis. Lately, instead of just saying thank you (unsolicited thanks are a new thing with him and I'll admit, I'm rather proud), he'll actually say "Thank you mommy." What makes it even more adorable is how he says it. For some reason when he says thank you it sounds like choo-choo. I'm refusing to let myself think there is any sort of speech impediment and continue to adore this little quirk.

So for those uninitiated few who have not had the pleasure of being around a two-year old boy, you will not quite understand the experience of your sweet little towheaded moppet bringing tears of joy to your eye one moment and then in the next causing you to stand, purple-faced with rage, repressing the desire to hurl obscenities and throw him across the room! You may be thinking I'm being a tad dramatic, for those who feel that way, I invite you to visit my house on a day without a nap, when we're stuck indoors because of rain and the child is imitating a Gremlin who has been fed after midnight.

I know 99% of bad behavior in children is due to bad parenting. I'm not really trying to pass the buck to my son for all of his more frustrating antics (pouring juice all over the floor, breaking every item he comes into contact with, dousing not one, but two computers with water - one survived, one did not), but am I really the first mother to question if her two-year old is a psychopath?

He thinks all forms of punishment and reprimand are either a game or hysterically funny. He seems to have no remorse for pulling the cat's tail or hitting his mom. I'm sure these things are normal and he has not yet developed the empathy skills that will guide him through his life, but yikes. Does empathy and understand come on all at once? Will he one day wake up and not think smacking me in the head is the funniest thing ever?

This leads me to an article I read by Dr. Lawrence Kutner about children and empathy. It is by no means a bad article, but the part at the end really got me."Although the best training for empathy begins in infancy, it's never too late to start." Great, I'm worried about my kid, so I'm reading this article. Now you tell me I'm already behind and have probably stunted my child, but I can still try to repair the damage and maybe if I'm lucky he won't end up knocking over a liquor store when he's 12.

Once again, dramatic, but I can't seem to help it. Seriously, how many things are we supposed to start in infancy with our children. How can one possibly fit it all in? From "Your Baby Can Read" to "Baby Einstein" it is drilled into us that we should be running our children through a series of exercises each day to teach them a variety of things that people 20 years ago would never have dreamed of attempting, all to make them better. The thing is, I'm not sure what they will be better at for all these enhancing activities.

So my kid can't read, rarely eats food that is good for him, still hits - even though I tell him not to - and just recently started sitting still long enough for me to read him a story. He can go from happy to tantrum in three seconds flat, and has the ability to irritate me to tears. But he is TWO. And I have to remind myself that being two and being psychotic are not the same thing. (Though having a two-year old might be able to make you psychotic...)

I think this whole parenting process is so much more about making positive changes to yourself than it really is about changing your child. I can put him in time-out until the cows come home, but it won't really make a difference until one day he realizes that this is not a game, this is a punishment. Kids are going to develop along a pretty broad, but predictable spectrum, and I think my expectations (and those of society to be honest) are a little outrageous. So tomorrow, when my little nutty kid wakes up, I'm going to give him a big hug, and then I'm going to spend the entire day just doing what he likes to do. I bet, after spending a day in his shoes, I'm going to learn a lot about him, and I probably will stop thinking he's psychotic...well, at least I hope so!

Is Nostalgia Addictive?

It's like old home week around here, as I found myself watching a few episodes of the show Party of Five last night online.I am a sucker when it comes to nostalgia, I just can't help letting my mind wander back in time and paint rosy pictures of life gone by. It takes very little to make a goofy smile of remembrance appear, as it did last night the entire time I was watching what was actually a rather depressing episode of Party of Five (though truthfully, which episodes of that show weren't depressing?).

I was addicted to this show in prime time. I distinctly remember my senior year of high school how a friend and I would meet up first thing Thursday morning to discuss the events of the previous night's show. Last night I stumbled upon the free episodes and couldn't seem to help myself. I can't even remember why I googled it in the first place, but I stayed up until 1am, watching it in parts on YouTube because I just couldn't stop.

Is nostalgia addictive? I did name the blog after the show (I started writing not long after watching my first episode in years) because I like the sentiment behind it. After all, we are a little party of three, finding our way through the world, albeit with much less drama than the Salingers seemed to face. But I think I also just liked the connection to the past.

I was doing the math last night and realized that my son won't start kindergarten until 2013, 31 years after I did. The world he knows is so unbelievably different from mine, as mine was from that of my parents, but it still seems odd to me that he will always live in a wired world where information is constantly at your fingertips and technology is obsolete before it hits the shelves.

What will he look back at fondly? He won't have to wait for the next morning to talk to his friends about his favorite TV show. He will text or email or tweet or do something else that hasn't even been invented yet. He'll watch shows streaming on the computer or saved on a DVR, while I taped mine on VHS. The world changes every second and I can't help but worry about my little man, caught up in the forever swirling world of 21st century life.

I'm sure he'll be fine, because this is all he knows. I will be the one left afloat, fumbling at what is new and casting longing glances back to what I considered an easier time, just like my parents did when I was a kid and so on and so on. I just hope that this ever changing, techno-driven world doesn't rob him of what I consider so important, the opportunity to look back and recognize that it was pretty good back then, even if we didn't have flying cars.

A Future Facebook Addict?

I love Yahoo, without it I would know absolutely nothing that is going on in the world as our television is always tuned to kids shows or ghost shows (the latter after the small child goes to bed of course). We try to catch the news as often as possible, but typically only hear parts of it as the kid likes to add his own rather loud commentary to life. I depend on the Yahoo homepage, it is my link to the outside world, a ticket out of two-year old land.

Today I learned from the site that "The Oregon Trail" and "Where is the world is Carmen San Diego?" are both coming back as games on Facebook.  Like most elementary school kids in the 80s, I played these games on an Apple IIe in my school computer lab. Also like everyone else, I frequently died of some horrible disease.

Now I'm not very adept at Facebook, I manage to check it about once a month or so, but I tend to avoid it because it is to me the equivalent of a black hole. You go on the site to find out if your friend has posted any new baby pictures and then three hours later you look up bleary eyed from the computer after following an obsessive need to see if your college roommate's elementary school best friend passed her bar exam or not.

With the advent of these games though, I wonder if I will find myself spending a little more time on Facebook. Not that I have a lot of time to be playing online games, but the sweet emotion of nostalgia is sometimes to difficult to resist and the opportunity to step back in time and channel the child I was might prove too tempting to ignore.

Barbie & Ken, together again?

While browsing Yahoo's top news today, I came across an article about the possibility of Barbie & Ken getting back together. I know, many of you are still shocked by the sudden break-up of the 40+ year relationship in 2004. I know I myself wondered if this development was really a commentary on the state of American marriage. But fear not, according to Ken's reps, the plastic Lothario is determined to win back his former flame by Valentine's Day 2011. Here's hoping all goes well and everything is once again right in the dream house.

Yes, this news actually got covered by CNN Money. Now don't get me wrong, I understand the need for fun distractions, but we have to all agree that this many column inches on the romance of two plastic dolls is a little, well, sad. (Though an excellent example of PR professionals hard at work.)

I think what struck me most, and made me click on the link, is that I have a copy of the article from 2004 announcing the demise of the Barbie+Ken union. I was young, single and working in Hollywood at the time and it just struck my funny bone. Way back then, I had a habit of printing out interesting articles and pasting them into my journal to comment on. I have no idea what my thoughts were at the time, though I'm sure I pontificated on how ridiculous the whole thing was, but I can distinctly remember the image accompanying the article, a broken heart with Barbie on one side and Ken on the other.

What I find most interesting about this sudden ad campaign is not that it is getting national coverage, but that it reminds me of the gal I was in 2004, and how different my life looks now. In 2004 I hadn't yet met my husband, I couldn't fathom having a child and I was working on a movie. Yes, nearly six years have passed, but it really does seem like yesterday. I remember printing the article and laughing as it made it's way into what was my near constant companion, the journal I felt compelled to document every seemingly memorable event in my life.

I feel rather nostalgic thinking about her now. She had the freedom that youth takes for granted, the ability to sit and document life almost before it even happens. These days, with a house, a two-year old, a husband and two extremely needy cats, even when I do have the time to journal I rarely remember to do it. When I do make it to my journal it is generally to write down a new word my son has learned, and almost never about what I'm thinking or feeling. On the days when I can't seem to string a coherent sentence together, it is nice to remember that somewhere deep inside, there is a person who has opinions and a sense of whimsy.

So I guess I have to actually thank Barbie & Ken for their on-again, off-again relationship. If it weren't for them, I might not have taken a moment to remember the me I was and appreciate the me I am. (And maybe I'll just sit down and write in my journal tonight!)