No makeup, ladies. Please?

On an objective, logical, and unbiased level, can we all please agree that it is twisted and bizarre that men spend every moment of their public lives without a spot of makeup on their faces while many, if not most, women are uncomfortable and unwilling to even leave the house without it?

This fact alone would seem to imply that men possess a natural beauty that women do not, which is obviously not the case.

As one of many men who prefer when women do not wear makeup, this has always annoyed me. I’ve always felt that women are much more beautiful absent any makeup and that confidence is infinitely more attractive than any amount of makeup that a woman could use.

And it’s not as if the makeup goes unnoticed to the untrained eye. We all know that your lips are not that red. We all know that your cheeks are not normally that pink. Your eyelids are not naturally dusky, and yes, we can all see the concealer that you are wearing, even though no one will ever tell you so. As masterfully as it may be applied, it’s no mystery when makeup has been applied, and we all know that it’s being used to cover or enhance something that the woman does not like about herself.

As the father of a little girl, this annoyance has now moved into the realm of genuine concern. I don’t want my daughter to ever feel like she needs to wear makeup, and I know how difficult a message this will be to send with so many women walking around the world painted and caked and smeared with the stuff.

But there’s hope.

First, my wife wears almost no makeup, and on the rare occasion when she uses it, she wears very little. If Clara ends up being anything like her mother, I will consider it a victory over the forces of makeup.  

Even better, there is apparently a trend for female celebrities to post photographs of themselves without makeup.

From a recent New York Times piece on the subject:

Female stars have been rushing to publish photos of themselves without makeup. Last week, Rihanna, known for her brightly colored hair and makeup, posted a photo of herself on Twitter looking like the girl next door, makeup free and with braided pigtails. That followed a quadriptych of photos she posted several months ago, showing her looking as if she had just rolled out of bed, albeit with flawless and radiant skin.

The writer, Austin Considine, questions whether these photos are being posted as a publicity stunt, but I don’t care why they are being posted as long as the celebrities keep it up. They are promoting a positive message either way. I want more of this.

Objectively, we must realize that the only reason we think it strange or daring or unusual for a woman like Rihanna to post a photo of herself absent any makeup is because we have come to expect most women, and especially female celebrities, to be wearing makeup whenever they are in public.

But there is no innate reason for women to wear makeup. Women’s skin is not unnaturally flawed. Women’s lips are not unnaturally pale. Women’s eyelids were not meant to be blue or green or purple. There was no tragic eyelid transformation to a more fleshy color as a result of Hiroshima radiation or high fructose corn syrup.

We have come to expect women to wear makeup because women wear makeup.

Perhaps if more celebrities decided that it is somewhat sad and fairly insane for women to feel the need to spend the time and money painting their faces while their male counterparts are walking around without the same need or expectation, things could change.    

I don’t know who the hell AnnaLynne McCord is, but I am her newest, biggest fan as a result of her recent decision to post a photo of herself without makeup and her comment on the subject:

In May, the actress AnnaLynne McCord posted an unvarnished photo of herself, her face dotted with red blemishes.

“I woke up this morning and decided I’m over Hollywood’s perfection requirement,” Ms. McCord wrote in a Twitter message accompanying the photo. “To all my girls (and boys) who have ever been embarrassed by their  skin! I salute you! I’m not perfect — and that’s okay with me!”

I’m going to get this photograph and her tweet blown up into a poster, and when she’ old enough to read, I’m going to hang it in my daughter’s room. Right over her bed. I realize that I might be fighting a losing battle when it comes to makeup, but at least I’m fighting.

2012: Products I can’t live without

Back in 2010, inspired by lists created by tech geeks like Michael Arrington and Kevin Rose, I created a list of products I could not live without.

Today I present my updated list of products I could not live without.

• Gmail
• Google Docs
• Google Calendar
• Google Chrome
• Mint (financial accounting software for the computer and mobile device)
• iPhone 4
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Carbonite (automatic, instant online backup)
• ZipList (a syncing mobile grocery list that we use for shopping)
• Evernote (note-taking program for the computer and mobile device)
• Dropbox (file syncing across my computer, mobile device and the cloud)
• Asus laptop
• Snapfish wireless headphones
• WordPress (my website and blogging software)
• Instapaper (saves webpages for later reading on computer and mobile device)

Some interesting comparisons between the 2010 and 2012 lists:

My 2010 list contained 14 items. This year’s list contains 16 items.

There are 7 items on the 2010 list that appear on this list as well, including the all the Google products, Mint, the iPhone (though the version has changed), and Carbonite.

ZipList has replaced Grocery IQ for my shopping list because it can sync between multiple mobile devices.

Twitter has replaced Facebook in terms of my indispensible social media tool. The amount of time I spend on Facebook is marginal. 

The mobile version of Chrome has replaced Opera Mini. It syncs open tabs between platforms and is just as fast as Opera.

Evernote replaced the pre-loaded note-taking program on the iPhone, which was so useless that it did not make my 2010 list even though I was using it on a daily basis.

WordPress replaced Typepad, which was another product so disappointing that even though I used it almost every day, it did not qualify as a product I could not live without in 2010.

YouTube has gained even greater importance in my life now that it is the primary means by which I can get her dressed in the morning and ready for bed at night without protest. A ten-minute episode of Charlie and Lola or Winnie the Pooh is just what I need to start and end my day without a fight.

I can totally picture that in my head.

The following descriptions can be found in Oliver Sacks’ THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT AND OTHER CLINICAL TALES. They describe a man who awoke one morning thinking that his left leg was not his own. Both sentences describe the same man, just a couple paragraphs apart from one another, and both are completely insane.

I have no idea what Sacks was thinking, but these have to be the most  impenetrable, inane descriptions of a person that I have ever read. 

His expression contained anger, alarm, bewilderment and amusement. Bewilderment  most of all, with a hint of consternation.

He gazed at me with a look compounded  of stupefaction, incredulity, terror and amusement, not unmixed with a jocular sort of suspicion. 

Parenting is supposed to make you sad, frightened and neurotic. Don’t make your kids suffer by mitigating the pain.

When I was a boy, I spent much of my summer at a Camp Yawgoog, a Boy Scout camp in Rockville, Rhode Island. My troop would spend a week at camp, and then I would spend another 2-7 weeks at a campsite designed for boys who wanted to spend more than just one week away from home. It was called Camp Baden Powell, and it consisted of a mishmash of boys from various Boy Scout troops around the country and abroad who were overseen by a theoretical Scoutmaster but were essentially on their own unless they got into trouble.

These were some of the best days of my life. The freedom, the independence, the personal responsibility and the decision-making that I was afforded helped to make the me the person I am today.

It was also fun as hell.

Parents were invited to visit the camp on Sundays, but this was an opportunity that my parents never exercised. I was also required to send a postcard home every Wednesday. If I did not arrive at the dining hall with one in hand, I would not be served dinner.

I often opted to eat a candy bar for dinner or stockpile bread at lunchtime rather than take the time to pen a missive to my parents. For my time at Camp Yawgoog, I was blissfully disconnected from the rest of the world.

As a parent, I will probably send my children to summer camp someday. Ideally, my son will find his way to Camp Yawgoog like his father did, and if I had my way, my daughter would as well. While my children are away at camp, I know that I will miss them a great deal, and I may even find myself nervous about the prospect of turning them over to the care of people who I don’t know all that well.

But as a parent, this is part of my job. I want my children to experience the same level of independence and personal responsibility that I did while away at camp, even if this means cutting the cord for weeks at a time.

It is not supposed to be easy. It may be hard on my children (for about four seconds), and it will most assuredly be difficult for me and my wife. Heart wrenching and frightening, even. Of this I have little doubt.

I have seen it many times before.  

For the past several years, I have taken my fifth grade students on an overnight trip to a nearby YMCA camp. For some students, this is the first time that they have ever slept away from home for any reason. Over the years, I’ve had to work hard in order to convince some parents to place their child in my care for those three days. Though I was always sympathetic to their needs and feelings, I never truly understood how difficult it was for some of these mothers and fathers until I became a parent myself.

A few years ago I had a student whose four older brothers and sisters had never spent a night outside the family home until after graduating from high school. As you might imagine, the idea of sending their youngest child away for three days was unfathomable to these parents, but through much discussion, repeated reassurances, some light-hearted cajoling and a smidgen of tough love, I managed to convince her father (the decision-maker in the family) to send his daughter to camp with me.

On the morning we were set to leave, he arrived at school to tell me that he had changed his mind, and once again, through hard work and many assurances, I managed to convince him that sending his daughter to camp with her peers was the best decision he could make.

When we arrived back at school three days later, her father was standing in the parking lot, waiting for me. As I climbed out of my car, he reached out, took hold of my arms and hugged me. He told me that the first night had been incredibly difficult for him, but by the time the sun was setting on his daughter’s second night away, he had come to realize how important this experience would be for her. “It was like a door opened for me,” he said. “I had to realize that this was not about my feelings but about what was best for my child. I called my other children and apologized to them for not realizing this sooner.”

I think I learned as much about parenting that day as he did.

This is why the recent trend for sleep-away camps to keep parent and child intimately connected via technology is one that I find disappointing and foolish.

From a recent TIME piece on the subject:

Summertime’s rite of passage — sleepaway camp — looks very different than it did a generation ago. No longer are children’s weeks away marked by subdued parental longing and the occasional piece of snail mail. Camp used to be a place kids went to learn self-reliance and discover themselves away from the watchful eyes of mom and dad, but now technology is allowing parents to keep tabs on their kids even from afar.

In a nod to helicopter parents’ inability to cut the cord, overnight summer camps are hiring staffers to take pictures of campers and post them on their websites or on their Facebook pages, or on the website of Bunk1, a service that hosts camp photos, facilitates emails between campers and their parents and exists solely to allay — or feed — parental anxiety.

I realize that the world changes constantly, and with it, parenting methods change as well. I am not opposed to change, nor am I foolish enough to believe that the way I was raised was ideal.

Nevertheless, I do not support this recent trend, and I think it is reflective of a overall trend in parenting that concerns me. In recent years, I have noticed more and more parents attempting mitigate the hardship and pain sometimes associated with good parenting by failing to impose limits on their children and refusing to allow their kids to struggle and suffer and learn life’s hardest lessons. Unwilling to make these difficult decisions, these parents are placing their own emotional needs ahead of their child’s developmental needs, regardless of the effects this may have on their children.

These are the parents who know they shouldn’t allow their toddler into their bed every night but continue to do so because stopping would be too difficult or painful for them.

These are the parents who feed their child chicken nuggets every night for dinner rather than providing a more balanced diet and sending the child to bed without dinner if necessary.

These are the parents who complete their child’s homework for them rather than forcing their child to face the consequences the next day at school.

In short, these are the parents who cannot be tough on their children because tough decisions are difficult decisions, painful not only to the child but to the parent as well.

Parenting was not supposed to be easy. Difficult decisions need to be made, and quite often, these decisions are most difficult on those required to make them. A crying toddler locked out of his parents’ bedroom will forget about the pain long before the parent who had to bury his or her head beneath a pillow in order to drown out the wails.

This is the cross that a parent must bear.

Whether my parents disconnected from me at summer camp because of thoughtful decision-making on their part or a general disinterest in my life (based upon the majority of my childhood, it is probably the latter), I cannot tell you how pleased I am that I was permitted to spend my summers at a Boy Scout adventureland where I was forced to fend for myself, fight my own battles, battle the occasional bully and develop a strong sense of  independence.

I don’t have a single photograph from my days at Camp Yawgoog, and while it would be nice to have a few of those memoires captured on film, I would take zero photographs over the prospect of being followed around by staffers whose job it was to document my existence at various times in the day in order to post my progress on Facebook so my parents could be happy.  

In the words of psychologist Michael Thompson, who wrote Homesick and Happy about the importance of summer camp:

“You can’t have your child away from you at camp physically but attached to you psychologically. That’s missing the point.”

The right way to make a commercial

I rarely watch any television that has not been pre-recorded. As a result, I almost never see commercials anymore. I simply fast-forward past them, thus denying the advertisers of their opportunity to pitch their products to me.

As a result of this time-shifting, advertisers are now looking for new ways to get viewers to watch their commercials, including hiring actors from the show to star in the commercials, thus blurring the lines between entertainment and advertisement.

Alternately, advertisers could simply write great commercials with hooks that grab the viewer, like this one, which I refrained from fast forwarding last night after catching the first couple seconds of the ad.

The first few lines of dialogue are perfect. They’re smart, funny, self-aware and completely relatable. I couldn’t help but continue watching.

And the rest of the commercial was just as good. While attempting to sell me a car, the writers presented me with a compelling character, told an amusing story and arguably weaved in a bit of social commentary as well.

I may not run out and purchase a Venza anytime soon, but I’ll be inclined to watch the next Venza commercial based upon what I’ve seen so far.

Can I re-write a book from my back list the same way Def Leppard re-recorded songs and now owns their rights?

Def Leppard, a band that provided much of the soundtrack of my youth, has re-recorded its backlist in an effort to regain financial control of their music.

With newly recorded "forgeries" of "Pour Some Sugar on Me" and "Rock of Ages" now available, the quintet has begun a series of re-recordings of its catalog material and "wrestled control of our career back" from the Universal Music Group, which frontman Joe Elliott says the band refuses to deal with "until we come up with some kind of arrangement" over compensation, especially for digital downloads.

I had no idea that this was possible, but apparently, it is. A record company pays musicians for the master recording of a song but not for the song itself. If a band wants to record a new version of the same song (or attempt to record an identical version of the same song), then the band retains complete financial control over their new version and can do with it as they please, including allowing it to compete for sales with the original version of the song.

I find this fascinating.

Curious about the results, I purchased the re-recording of “Pour Some Sugar On Me” in order to assess the performance. Though it’s a creditable rendition of the song, it’s clearly not the same song that blasted from the windows of every car in the summer of 1987.

I think I’ll be sticking with the original.

But this led me to wonder:

Would this strategy also work in publishing?

Could I re-write my first novel, Something Missing, either word-for-word or perhaps slightly differently, adding or subtracting from the story as I wished, and create an entirely new work in a legal sense? 

Unable to read my books after publication because of my preternatural sense of perpetual dissatisfaction and an incessant need to revise, a strategy like this might allow me to take a book that I wrote a decade ago and refresh it, making the necessary changes that are now obvious to me thanks to an improved skill set and more finely honed authorial instincts.

I’m not necessarily interested in doing this, but is it possible?

Could I publish the new and improved Something Missing that would compete against the original version of the novel?

Does Wikipedia have a a woman problem or do women have a Wikipedia problem?

Torie Bosch of Slate wrote a piece about a recent debate on Wikipedia over the validity of an entry on Kate Middleton’s bridal gown as a means of illustrating the gender gap that exists amongst Wikipedia’s citizen editors. Only 9 percent of Wiki editors are female, which is actually an improvement over recent years but still exceptionally disproportionate.

Serious efforts have been made to mitigate this gender gap. Wikipedia’s cofounder, Jimmy Wales, recently addressed the problem and has taken action, as have female editors already working on the site. Despite these efforts, female editors, on average, “make fewer changes to articles than male editors” and frequently don’t continue to be active online.”

All of this brings me to Bosch’s title for the piece:

How Kate Middleton’s Wedding Gown Demonstrates Wikipedia’s Woman Problem

I can’t help but wonder if Wikipedia has a woman problem or if women have a Wikipedia problem. While the editorial pages are currently dominated by male editors, anyone is free to make additions, deletions and revisions to the encyclopedia, meaning that women have just as much access to Wikipedia as men. They may have to fight for turf and battle a horde of male editors in order to be heard, but nothing is preventing them from doing so.

Furthermore, the efforts made thus far to involve more female editors have not yielded meaningful results.

I would also argue that the inclusion of Kate Middleton’s wedding gown into the pages of Wikipedia was by no means a slam dunk and not representative of any gender gap. I am glad that there was debate about its inclusion. I’m still not so sure that it belongs in the encyclopedia, but I am confident that if a discussion took place, it’s inclusion is probably justified. This is what makes Wikipedia great. I would also argue that the debate over the dress’s inclusion would have taken place even if female editors outnumbered male editors by a large number.

Like I said, the dress was hardly a slam dunk, regardless of who is editing the site.  

I think it’s great that Wikipedia is making efforts to be more inviting and inclusive to women, but at some point, when a subset of people is not taking advantage of an opportunity that is readily available to them, we might need to shift our gaze away from  the missed opportunity to the people failing to take advantage of it.

Wikipedia may have a woman problem, but I suspect that the problem is the result of women having a Wikipedia problem.

I’m not sure what the problem might be, but knowing the source of the problem is often the first step in finding a solution.

Zapped!

While I was home alone for four days recently, I was reminded about how much easier it is to die when you live alone. Carrying the dog downstairs one evening, I stumbled, and though I managed to regain my balance before falling, I envisioned what might have happened had I not. I could have tumbled down the stairs and broken my neck with no one home to call for help.

This flash of imagined tragedy reminded me of an incident that occurred during the only year of my life when I was actually living alone. I wrote about a few years ago as Elysha and I were moving into our first apartment together:

_________________________________________

I was setting up my computer in our new apartment when I was reminded of an incident that took place about two years ago while setting up the PC in another apartment.

I had just separated from my ex-wife and moved into an apartment down the street in Newington. It was the first time in my life that I was living alone (except for my dog, Kaleigh, of course), and it was  strange for me. I’ve lived with Born Again Christians, co-workers, friends, and even strangers for one summer, but I had never lived alone.

It was about 6:00 AM and I was crawling under my desk, feeding wires through holes and becoming frustrated. It was the kind of task that required someone else’s help, just to grab hold of the wires as you passed them through the holes. I needed just a few seconds of assistance, and not having it, the struggle was highlighting my newfound loneliness.

In an effort to make things easier, I had plugged every connector into the power strip already, and as I was feeding the last of the wires up through the desk, I put a live one between my teeth in order to free my other hand, forgetting that the wire was already plugged in.

I woke up about three hours later. Kaleigh was licking my face and my head was pounding. The television, which I had turned on while setting up the computer, was still on, but I remember thinking that the show that I could hear from under my desk was all wrong.

“This show doesn’t come on this early.”

I then noticed that my tongue hurt as well. It felt as if it been burned, and I slowly began putting the pieces together. My headache had been caused by the sudden jerking of my body as the electrical current passed through me, smashing my head into the desk and giving me a concussion (I’m unfortunately prone to concussions because of a multitude of previous head injuries). My tongue had been burned by the metallic end of the cord, which thankfully had fallen out of my mouth.

I drove myself to the hospital to get checked out, thinking about how dangerous it is for people, but especially me, to be living alone. Considering the number of times I hurt myself, I was genuinely frightened about the prospect of relying on Kaleigh to call 911 the next time I was stung by a bee, electrocuted, knocked unconscious, or whatever else might happen.

My friends call this The Matty Factor.

The Matty Factor dictates that if someone is going to be injured on a particular day, it’s going to be Matty. If something is going to be broken on any given day, it will be Matty who breaks it. If something is going to be lost or stolen, it will be stolen from Matty or lost by him. If tragedy strikes, it will probably strike Matty first and hardest.

I know it seems silly to think that one person can create this degree of carnage, but unfortunately The Matty Factor usually holds true.

So living alone was risky to say the least.

Fortunately I survived my year in that apartment and now have Elysha in my life, poised and ready to call in case of emergency.

I’m sure she won’t have to wait too long.

Signage for the stupid

Honestly, people… who the hell continues to do this? It must be the same moron, traveling from public restroom to public restroom, dropping paper towel after paper towel into the toilet. Right?

There just can’t be this many stupid people in the world to justify the number of these kinds of signs that I see on an almost daily basis.  

More from The Baby Whisperer

My wife and kids spent the last three days in the Berkshires with the in-laws while I remained stuck in Connecticut for work.

As always, my in-laws took remarkable care of the family. My father-in-law is especially great with the kids. He has an infinite amount of patience with them, and my daughter says that he is a “great player.”

He seems to channel his inner child especially (and perhaps unnervingly) effectively.

Being away from the family for so long was difficult, but video and images like this always make it a little easier, knowing that Gramps has things well under control. 

 

Church of the Holy Penis

Our longtime friends, Charles and Justine, moved to Arizona last week, and I am deeply saddened by their departure. Charles was a professor of physics at the University of Connecticut and has moved onto the University of Arizona. In doing so, he and his wife have returned to their roots.

Charles is the second friend whose job as a professor has moved him away from us, causing Elysha and I to swear off befriending all professors in the future. It’s just not worth the pain.  

I was thinking about them this morning and realized that their departure also means that I will probably never attend another religious service in their church, which I have nicknamed Church of the Holy Penis. I found myself surprisingly saddened by this as well.

I wrote about the reason for the nickname several years ago and managed to locate it this morning. In honor of my departed friends (and perhaps spurned by yesterday’s sexually-suggestive Mr. Snuffleupagus), here is that piece:

___________________________________

Last December I attended midnight mass at The Church of the Holy Penis with our friends. At the time, I had to explain the name that I had assigned to the church, but this morning I returned for a baptism, armed with my camera.

Though photos during the service were not permitted, I risked the wrath of God in order to snap off just a few shots (34 in all) of the baptism plus a few of the church’s uniquely phallic lighting fixtures.

At one point, while leaning over to snap a photo of my friends as their babies’ heads were being moistened, my vision was obscured by a tall, thick candle. No matter which way I shifted, the candle continued to block out the face of one family member or another. Frustrated, I grumbled, “Goddamn candle,” much to the dismay of the Puritan-like family sitting behind me. The mother gave me a deadly stare and the father rolled his eyes in disgust.

I returned their looks with a smile and continued to snap my pictures and finally managed to capture a few good images.

Including some of the light fixtures.

Have you ever seen anything so bizarre, particularly for a church?

 

Five favorite quotes

A reader asked me if there were any quotations that served as a source of inspiration for me. While I’m not entirely sure how much inspiration I derive from them, I maintain a list of favorite quotations on my desktop that I add to from time to time.

The following have been rated as my five favorite for a very long time: 

Tears are not arguments. -Machado de Assis

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. -H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem. -Theodore Rubin

Irreverence is the champion of liberty and its only sure defense. -Mark Twain

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering. -Arthur C. Clarke

The sexually suggestive Mr. Snuffleupagus

We spent the weekend at the in-law’s home in the Berkshires, where my daughter was playing with my wife’s old Fisher-Price Sesame Street Clubhouse, circa 1973.

The in-laws throw nothing away.

Included in the set is the fabled Mr. Snuffleupagus.

Were toymakers in the 1970s completely blind, or is it possible that millions of there were sold to children without ever noticing the unfortunate and suggestive shape of Mr. Snuffleupagus from behind?

I questioned why there were young children at the Aurora theater, and there was nothing wrong with me doing so.

In a piece entitled Stop Wondering Why There Were Young Children At The Aurora Theater, author Lisa Belkin asks “What is it that led so many people to dwell on a question of parenting when so many more sweeping questions loomed?”

I would like to answer Lisa Belkin’s question.

We dwell on the question of parenting when so many more sweeping questions loom because human beings are capable of thinking about more than one thing at a time.

We can grieve for the dead and for those who lost loved ones in this tragedy.

We can send positive thoughts to the survivors and hope that they find peace in this time of tragedy. 

We can question our nation’s gun laws.

We can demand change.

And yes, we can also worry about infants and small children who are brought to a midnight showing of a Batman movie, because as parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and teachers, it is our natural instinct to worry about children, and this can include worrying about the wisdom behind exposing small children to a violent film in the wee hours of the morning.

As avid movie goers who want to watch a film undisturbed, we can even find the mental capacity to protest the presence of these children in our theaters simply on the grounds that it is inconsiderate to our fellow patrons.  

Like most human beings, I am not a single minded organism. My thoughts need not occupy only one stream of consciousness. I am capable of thinking and feeling and even acting upon more than one thing at a time.

It’s true. As the parent of a three year old and a two month old, and as an elementary school teacher with fifteen years on the job, my thoughts eventually drifted to the presence of children in that theater and the wisdom of parents who made the decision to bring them, not because they might be exposing their children to a potential gunman, but because it’s at minimum a questionable parenting decision. I did not contact these parents directly or wish any more suffering upon them than they have already endured, but as a human being who cares deeply about kids, this is one of the many aspects of this tragedy where my thoughts settled in the wake of the tragedy.

Perhaps the fact that this is a subject that I wrote about earlier this year influenced the direction that my thoughts took. This was not a new issue for me. 

I even took the time earlier this year to investigate the problem and write about it.

Twice.

So do me a favor, Lisa Belkin. Don’t tell me what I should and should not wonder about, because I am perfectly capable of wondering about many, many things at the same time, including why you might think otherwise.

Three unjust presumptions

1. The cold person’s temperature preference always trumps the warm person’s temperature preference.

2. The parent who argues for greater frequency in the bathing of a child assumes unjust moral authority over the parent who argues for less frequent baths.

3. The person who does not cry is automatically the bad guy.

Psychoanalyzing my Moth GrandSLAM performance

Last Tuesday night I performed at The Moth GrandSLAM, and while I did well, finishing in second place, I also failed to tell my story in the way that I had planned for the first time in my brief Moth career. It was also the first time I had ever taken the stage for any occasion (and there have been many) and not felt entirely in control. My almost six-minute story ended in less than five minutes, and it was only through luck and a bit of verbal jujitsu that I was able to string together  enough facts to keep some semblance of the actual story.

I assumed that it was because I had become emotional onstage, but there have been other times when emotions have gotten the best of me before. This time was different. I had also lost all focus onstage. I had begun to tremble. To be completely honest, I couldn’t keep track or entirely remember what I was saying. The words were coming from my mouth, but it was as if I was only half aware of what they were. Rather than telling the story, I had somehow drifted into the story and was listening to it as it was being told.

That’s not quite right, but it’s as close as I can get to describing the feeling.

It was all very strange, and ever since that night, I have been concerned that I had somehow lost my onstage mojo. I wondered if my inability to remain calm and focused in front of a large group of people was a sign of things to come. I worried that this may happen every time I took the stage to tell a story, and if that were the case, my brief storytelling career would be over.

Regardless of the scores that I received for Tuesday’s performance, I never wanted to feel that way again, and I was afraid that I might.

I wrote about my Moth experience a couple days after the performance, and a friend and psychologist who knows the story that I told onstage well weighed in on my experience. Her words brought immediate understanding and comfort to me.

She wrote:

With all you've been through, those events were among the most traumatic, if not the most. And the body remembers trauma, even when the mind has figured it out. For whatever reason, the Moth triggered some PTS.

What (Tuesday night and the actual experience) had in common were you as the focus/center of attention in both cases. While that's usually fine, in fact you’re very comfortable in that place, you haven't talked about that subject in front of a lot of people. I think the crowd plus the topic triggered your PTS. And it wasn't simple PTS, it was prolonged, intense, potentially destructive, scary, icky, despicable, so-called "complex PTS " in my business. It's as if you had a body flashback.

I have suffered with post traumatic stress disorder since surviving an armed robbery in 1993. For years I would wake up every night screaming, and my nerves have always been on a hair trigger as a result. For more than a decade, my life was governed by a complex set of rules and precautions designed to keep me safe and in charge of my environment. I was an over-planner and hyper-vigilante to a level that is difficult to imagine.

When I met my wife, she finally convinced me to receive treatment for the condition, and after two years of incredibly hard work, I managed to recover. The nightmares, for the most part, have stopped. While I am still easily startled and remain more alert than most people, the rituals that I once undertook upon entering a new environment in order to feel safe have fallen by the wayside. Most important, the deafening click of an empty gun being fired, which used to fire off in my head at several times throughout the day, is thankfully no more.

But when my reputation and career came under attack in 2007, many of my PTS symptoms returned, and I went back to my therapist for a while in order to deal with the issue. It was a brief and surprisingly manageable flare-up, but my friend is right. The anonymous, public attack on me and my wife during the summer of 2007 was one of the most traumatic events in my life, and when I took the stage last Tuesday night to describe them, it was almost as if I were experiencing it all over again. 

I find great comfort in this newfound awareness. While experiencing a post traumatic stress attack on stage is not something that I would ever want to happen again, it is unlikely that it ever would, since there are only a small handful of stories that I could tell that might trigger my PTSD. The story of the robbery, perhaps, which I have yet to tell, and possibly the car accident that nearly took my life in 1988. These two events have been identified by my therapist as instances that triggered my first bouts with PTSD, and so they are likely the only stories that might cause a similar reaction onstage. Even so, now that I am aware of this potential, I think I can be better prepared for it and manage it more effectively than I did on Tuesday night.

My hope is to tell the story of the summer of 2007 onstage again someday, and hopefully in a longer format. Ideally, I would need 10-12 minutes to tell the story in its entirety, and though I initially thought that I might never want to speak of it again in any context, the understanding of what happened on Tuesday night has already ended my concerns about taking the stage again and has me convinced that next time, I will likely become emotional again, but those emotions will not be accompanied by the lost, unfocused, detached, harrowing sensation of Tuesday night.

My hope is to be able to tell that story again someday, with all the emotion of Tuesday night, but to also tell the story in its grim but ultimately triumphant entirety.

Thanks to the understanding that my friend has provided, I think I can do that now.    

The Baby Whisperer

My father-in-law is a baby whisperer, at least when it comes to my son.

This is not the first time he has garnered this level of focused joy from Charlie.

Utterly terrifying super power

If my wife had to choose one super power, it would be teleportation. I think this is a brilliant but selfish choice.

If you get to choose a super power of any kind, the only morally acceptable choice in terms of the fate of the world is the ability to see the future. The ability to warn about natural disaster and prevent manmade ones trumps the ability to pop into Manhattan for dinner in the blink of an eye.

Not by much. But it does.

Besides, teleportation is hardly a super power. Physicists have already achieved this teleportation years ago, as the video below demonstrates.

But be warned. If you are anything like me, this video may terrify you.

I have a great deal of respect for physicists, but the fact that particles are aware that they are being measured should scare the hell of everyone, physicists included, but they seem to accept this fact as if it were no big deal.

I’ll never understand this.

Least favorite animal

My least favorite animal is the koala bear. It sleeps 17 hours a day.

I have a hard time respecting anyone who is still in bed at 8:00 AM. How could I possibly respect any animal that sleeps that much?

Urine, drugs and advertising

Have you seen this item? The Wizmark is an interactive urinal communicator that can talk, sing, or flash a string of lights around a promotional message when greeting a visitor a “visitor.”

The large anti-glare, water-proof viewing screen is strategically located just above the drain to ensure guaranteed viewing without interruptions.  Using the elements of surprise and humor in a truly unique location will allow Wizmark, in combination with your ad, to make a lasting impression on every male that sees it.

It’s an odd and amusing (and questionable) form of advertisement, but it’s hardly new. The Swisher Hygiene Company, a leader in restroom sanitation, has been placing urinal pads in restrooms for years with the message Don’t Do Drugs emblazoned upon each.

For a decade, I’ve found myself actually forced to urinate on a message that encourages me to avoid drug use.

Brilliant marketing plan, don’t you think?