Month: May 2021

Rights (and Lefts) of Passage

Jeanna G3 Comments

When I was middle school age, my mom and I decided to pierce our own ears in the downstairs bathroom with sewing needles. This little anecdote was challenged at a party in my basement, so of course I had to prove I wasn’t lying, and I decided the best way to do so was to pierce a male classmate’s ear in the same way. That was crazy.

My daughter got a second hole in her ear pierced the other day and, based on my experiences, I think it’s kind of a big deal. (FYI It was done in a store without household tools.) Well, as my brain works, I started thinking about other ‘kind of big deals’ that she might, and maybe should, experience. Initially I thought of these experiences as rites of passage… until I looked up what those actually are. Getting your ear pierced is not a rite of passage in our culture, but it can be a right of passage. By that I mean, we experience a lot of things, and it’s those experiences that give us all the feels and the wherewithal to continue taking life as it comes. Some of them help us to reinvent ourselves and become more unique. Some of them humble us and help us to become more like everyone else, which then enables us to empathize and support the global community in a positive way. If there’s one thing I’ll remember from this past year, it’s that we’re all in this together. Some of these “rights of passage” feel good, and some are more like “lefts of passage” that we’d probably skip if given the choice. Some are things we choose to do, some happen by mistake. Some are gifts and some are losses delivered by other people. Some things happen because we just don’t know any better…yet. Some things just happen because life is good. And some things happen because life’s a bitch. But all of them really do help us to navigate this thing called life.

In middle school a classmate sitting behind me on the bleachers during an assembly snapped my bra. All his buddies snickered. All my girlfriends rolled their eyes. Initially I was like, “Dude. Not cool,” but I’ll be damned if I didn’t smile at him in the hallway later that day.

One summer we were vacationing in Clearwater, FL. My parents treated us with ice cream cones. As soon as I stepped off the boardwalk into the sand, a seagull flew right past my face and knocked my scoop off the cone and onto the beach. I stood there wondering why the ice cream didn’t come with a warning.

My high school sweetheart bought me a rose for our one-week anniversary. I saved it in a box for years.

In college I had to roll pennies in order to buy my next meal.

I learned to drive a manual transmission in the church parking lot when I was in middle school.

My friends and I scared the shit out of ourselves playing Bloody Mary and Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board, and with a Ouija board at our sleepovers.

I shaved and frosted my own hair on a dare.

I tore up my legs learning to shave with those darn Bic razors.

I got thrown in the locker room showers in my full soccer uniform, cleats and all.

I could probably go on forever with all the crazy, random things that have happened in my life, but the point of each that I’d be trying to convey is that they happened, which means I happened. And I’m still happening. Rights or lefts, highs or lows, I’m grateful for all of them. They’ve made me a little more cynical, yet even more hopeful. I’m smarter and more empathetic. I’ve had enough experiences to know what I like and don’t like, and I can be pickier about what I want to do with one of my most valuable and fleeting gifts: time.

Oftentimes, when thinking about the angle of approach on my posts, I poll my friends and family about the topic at hand. I posed the question “What are some things, good or bad, that you think all children/people should experience, because ‘that’s life?’ I received more lefts than rights (although some are pretty similar), and I wonder why that is? Do we think more negative things need to happen in order for us to learn and become better people, people with stronger character? Or is it just that we will feel better if everyone else experiences some crappy luck? My dear friend pointed out that we can’t fully experience joy without pain, so maybe it’s okay if there’s more lefts than rights, because a few rights will still outweigh the lefts. Of course her response prompted me to immediately play Rob Base’s and D.J. E-Z Rock’s “Joy and Pain.” But I digress… So here are the messages I was sent back, and I hope you comment with your own:

The rights… 1) Winning 2) Receiving applause at the end of a performance 3) Love 4) Love at first sight 5) A first date 6) A first kiss 7) Romance 8) Someone writes you a song or poem 9) Someone buys you flowers 10) Setting a goal… and working towards achieving it 11) Being comforted 12) Being found 13) Cold pizza for breakfast 14) Being validated

The lefts… 1) Lack of provisions 2) Disappointment 3) Heartbreak 4) Loss of a love 5) Getting dumped 6) Criticism 7) Losing 8) Argument with a friend 9) Failure 10) Learning from mistakes 11) Stepping in dog shit and/or chewing gum 12) Falling on your face 13) Losing something irreplaceable, or having something stolen 14) Getting picked last 15) Getting lost 16) Having to make a choice between two things you really want 17) Something meaningful of yours gets broken 18) Being denied/being told no 19) Being scared 20) Being lonely 21) Rejection

Somewhere in between… 1) Peer pressure 2) Waiting tables 3) Slumber parties 4) Summer camp 5) DisneyWorld

So what do you think everyone needs to experience in their lives, and to what end?

The True Meaning of Adulting

Jeanna GLeave a comment

Adulting. Supposedly a term created for Gen Y to describe the mundane stuff adults do, like paying bills, working, buying groceries. I think of Rachel from Friends cutting up her dad’s credit cards and learning to do her own laundry. But real adulting is encountering harsh realities and rude awakenings in our everyday lives (you know, those surprising and unpleasant discoveries that yes, you were mistaken, your ideal world is not in fact real), and then dealing with them in (hopefully!) positive and productive ways. Biology aside, why do we become adults? Why can’t we stay children forever?

It’s been interesting, to say the least, to be a parent and witness my child growing up. There’s the obvious, expected, and somehow always surprising physical changes, like how she’s close to fitting into my shoes at age 9. And there’s the not-so-obvious, but still expected, yet somehow surprising emotional changes. The other day she was playing with a young boy, a close friend of ours, who has always been very sweet toward her. They were spraying water at each other, but blocking the water with umbrellas, so no one was actually getting wet. All very sweet and innocent, until the little boy crept up on my daughter and dumped a bottle of water down her back. It took her a moment to register what had just happened, not because she couldn’t tell it was water running down her body, but because she couldn’t understand why it happened. She looked at me and, slowly but surely, started to cry. It was very painful to watch because in that moment I knew why she was so sad. She wasn’t just experiencing getting water dumped on her, she was experiencing a loss of innocence.

Loss of innocence happens through experience. We either play a role in an event (good guy, bad guy, bystander), or simply learn more information about the world through the many sources we have. But the events and information that cause this loss are usually shocking or hurtful. I think of the process like this: When we are born, we are gifted with a jar of innocence marbles. As we experience loss, disappointment, shock or hurt, we lose a marble. Some experiences only cost us one marble, some cost a few a more, and some are so horrific that the jar shatters and we lose all of our innocence marbles in one fell swoop. Looking at my daughter’s face that day, I could see in my mind’s eye a beautiful, shiny marble roll down the driveway, clink through the sewer grate, and fall into the runoff below, never to be seen again. Her jar is still very full, so her shoulder remains relatively chip-free. But I wonder, when will her marbles run out?

Hurt and shock can come from big things and small things, but it’s the accumulation of them that grows us into adults. I remember something as simple as walking into a room when Friday the 13th was on, and seeing Jason’s burnt, scarred face, and being so shocked that the image was permanently seared into my brain. I remember witnessing my friends doing illegal things and the new feelings that stirred up in my chest as a result. I remember being the victim of other people’s actions and wondering why I had to be involved. And yes, I’ve done things I’m not proud of, and those cost me a few marbles, too. Sometimes it’s just happenstance or bad luck that leads to these eye openers. Sometimes it’s calculated because someone wants to hurt you. And the worst is when it’s someone who is supposed to love you, who is supposed to be loyal, who you are supposed to be able to trust. My daughter lost a marble that day because the little boy was someone who she thought would never do anything that wasn’t nice to her on purpose.

I lost most of my marbles by the time I was 17. But what’s important to understand is that I still experience hurt, loss, shock and disappointment. I may have lost my marbles but I gained the tools I need to cope and bounce back in their place. As children begin to lose their innocence, they don’t always know how to manage that grief. This is where the real adulting comes in. We become adults, sadly, when we’ve lost all of our marbles. We become adults when we learn how to cope with grief and harsh realities and rude awakenings. But what we adults need to remember to do is share our knowledge and help children navigate their losses. Help them identify and acknowledge what happened, and to make sense out of something that makes no sense. Help them to know they will be stronger as a result. Help them to know that they do not have to repeat the negative behavior they may have witnessed or fallen victim to. Help them to fill their jar with healthy coping tools. And if you can, help prevent the loss of those innocence marbles in the first place, and prolong the naïveté of childhood for as long as possible! Let’s flip the script and change the meaning of adulting from ordinary to extraordinary!