12 things parents raising bilingual children need to know – multilingual parenting – bilingual children
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(C) 2016 Talkin' Ltd t/Hi. My name is Mara. Sometimes I write stuff.
Hey, emetophobes! Maybe don’t read this. Eat some Saltines instead.
So let me explain my deep, abiding love for America’s favorite soda cracker.
Saltines, to me, are more than a cracker. They are a lifesaver. It’s a bold statement, I know, and one that makes even less sense to those who grew up outside of North America and never knew the wonders of that miracle cracker. A Saltine is a tiny square made of yeast, baking soda, flour, and usually topped with salt. They are my favorite snack.
“Saltines?” People always say, when they find out. “They’re so bland!”
“Not just Saltines,” I say. “Unsalted-top Saltines.” Yes, I’m that boring.
Like most humans, I enjoy eating. But I have never been much of a foodie. It’s possible I’m a supertaster — I can’t stand anything extremely bitter or tasting too strongly of fish, alcohol, or artificial sweetener, and cilantro is the devil’s herb — but I am just not very experimental when it comes to food. It might also have something to do with my parents, who are not passionate cooks. My mother did make amazing chocolate chip cookies, my dad likes to grill, and my stepmother is good with a wok, but when I was growing up, meals were mostly made without enthusiasm. Cooking was to them what it is to me, a means to an end. They had to keep five kids fed, at the lowest cost. We lived off canned soup, frozen condensed orange juice, and powdered potatoes. Living near LA meant we could have authentic Mexican food anytime we wanted, but that was as interesting as we got. Bland food was what we ate, and we liked it. There was always a box of Saltines in the house, to complement whatever soup or chili we were having for dinner that night, and for one other reason: they are an excellent cure for nausea.
Mine is a nervous stomach. I had three brothers at three different schools, and that tripled my likeliness of catching a stomach virus. And catch I did, quite often. 23 and Me confirmed my lifelong suspicion that I am very susceptible to noroviruses.
Staying home sick was not fun. My mother was not the type to fuss over her kids when they were ill. We could read, but the only TV we were going to watch was old movies she picked out herself. (I liked this a lot more than my brothers did — there were a lot of musicals and a lot of Audrey Hepburn movies.)
The only comfort, the one constant, the one thing I could rely on, were my Saltines. Our father would go to Smart and Final, a warehouse of a store, and come home with dozens of bottles of Gatorade, twenty ounce cans of chicken soup, and giant boxes of Saltines. They were all I ate for those three-day periods of sickness, and they got me through it. They were as much a comfort object as my blanket and Pinky, my favorite teddy bear.
To this day, I hate being nauseated more than any other physical feeling. I hate feeling out of control of my own body, that this other force has taken it over. I would rather feel almost any of the pains I’ve ever experienced than be nauseated for a long period of time.
But the world does not care about what I want, and in addition to frequent stomach bugs, I also get terrible motion sickness. This would be manageable if I had grown up anywhere other than Los Angeles, land of the freeway. Many of my childhood memories are of being carsick. The only way I can read or watch something on a long car trip is by putting a coat backwards over my face so I can’t see the windows out the corner of my eye and make myself dizzy. I am lucky to have moved somewhere with reliable public transportation, although I’ve thrown up on every mode of transportation. And roller coasters are out of the question.
Whenever I was young and carsick, as soon as I got home I would grab a sleeve of Saltines and make the sickness go away. Reorient myself, settle my stomach, and remember that everything was going to be OK. It’s what I still do today, after cab rides or Lindsay Ellis driving me home after seeing Fury Road again.
I believe I am the only person in my family with this association. While I remember my brother Jon shoving a stack of Saltines into his mouth, one after another, as he read the newspaper, I haven’t seen him eat Saltines in years. Danny prefers Ritz crackers, and this is a taste his kid — known around here as Oxytocin Booster — has inherited. Joel’s comfort food is rice and beans, and Anna loves tortilla chips so much she eats a big bag of them on her birthday instead of cake. (“Cake is bullshit! Why would I want to eat some weird sweet sponge-bread?”) But they understand, as do my friends, who send me cake recipes and eBay sales for antique cracker tins. I’ve never been much of a fangirl for anything — the idea is a bit alien to me, probably because, as conceited as this will sound, I had fans before I ever was one — but everyone I know knows how much these little squares mean to me. Strangers may mock me, but I am secure and I am safe, as long as the grocery store is well-stocked.
Now here is
So I’ve been busy working on my book. Yes, actually working on it, not procrastinating. You can expect a new blog post in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, here are some things I’ve been doing!
I’m featured on , one of my favorite websites! , a now out of print series that was the Orthodox Jewish answer to the Babysitters’ Club or Sweet Valley High.
My list , is up on McSweeney’s! I think my favorites are the Jersey Boys and Jason Robert Brown ones.
On the podcast , Jay W. Friedman and I read . It sounds like a hair metal song but is actually a terrible book by “Dr.” Beatrice Sparks, the woman who found (i.e., made up) the book Go Ask Alice (If you’ve never heard of that book, ).
Over on my friends’ podcast , I shared my Pokemon conspiracy theory.
And finally,
that came out really well.
My next blog post will be about my One True Love. Yes, it will be about Saltines. I’m not kidding.
Dear Young Mara,
Hey, you! It’s me, you at twenty-seven. I’m here to tell you one of your biggest dreams is coming true:
Congratulations! It’s finally happening.
While I’m here, though, is there anything you want to know?
Yes, you can ask anything.
Yes, I’m going to answer your questions like this.
Because when you were fifteen you read a book of plays by David Ives, and in the foreword he answered a bunch of questions from his fans, but didn’t write what the questions were. You must have thought that was funny, because it stayed with you. Maybe this is an homage.
Your book will be essays about your life, especially about being young. (It will be written for grown-ups, you’ve put your young adult and middle-grade book ideas on the back burner for now.) I know you like to think of yourself as a grown-up in a child’s body, but you’re really not. And that’s OK.
Remember seeing the little Penguins on the sides of the books your brothers were reading? Those guys will be publishing your book.
You submitted a book proposal through your amazing book agent, Alyssa Reuben, and met with some publishers, including a very cool editor at Viking/Penguin, Lindsey Schwoeri. There was some bidding and business stuff and then everything was finalized. They wanted your book, and they’re getting to publish it!
Yes, a Penguin dressed as a Viking sounds adorable. Your sister thought so, too.
Yes, you’re still close with Anna.
The Boys are doing well. You’re closer now that you live in different places and don’t have to fight over the bathroom.
No, you don’t live in Minneapolis or Chicago. You live in New York.
Yes, New York City. Not the area of New York where Dad grew up. Be glad, you’ve driven through it, and it’s depressing.
Yes, you do have a cat! You have two, in fact.
Dogs aren’t scary anymore. Dogs are great! You like them now they aren’t as big as you.
Yes, you’re still short. You’ve come to appreciate it, though. There’s nothing more fun than having people judge you by your size and then showing them up. Yoda was right.
No, you never really did have a Bat Mitzvah. You could do always what your grandmother did and have one at sixty.
Riding a bike is still hard, but you actually are trying to get better at it.
Well, fortunately, you live somewhere with reliable public transportation.
Sports are still hard, partly because you have (as yet undiagnosed) asthma. But you like exercising now! You actually like running. And at one point you worked out so much at the gym you got folliculitis. You disgusting, bacteria-ridden jock, you.
You also kind of like math now, too. And you LOVE science. Sorry.
That never really got off the ground. It’s OK, most screenplays by eight-year-olds don’t get picked up.
No, you never managed to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. I know how badly you wanted that. The good news is no one over the age of 12 really cares that much about the Guinness Book of World Records.
No Oscars, either.
You don’t really care about that anymore.
Or that, either.
NO NO NO YOU ARE NOT.
Yes, it’s OK to admit you like the Spice Girls now. You have seen your brothers sing “Still Alive” falsetto on Rock Band, they can’t judge you anymore.
No. Were you really going to believe a Ouija board? It wasn’t even a real Ouija board. She made it out of a pizza box.
No, you didn’t go to Northwestern like Mom and Dad.
You did go to NYU! You thought about University of Michigan, but they didn’t have the kind of program you wanted. You also wanted to go to Emerson, partly because Jon would be nearby, but NYU accepted you and that was that.
You’re not a more observant Jew. You’re actually kind of the opposite.
Yes, you have dated several Nice Jewish Boys. Some were nicer than others.
Yes, you’ve been in love. Sometimes it’s the best thing ever, sometimes it’s exhausting, and usually it’s nothing like you expect.
No, you are not going to die a virgin.
No, you are also not going to be a virgin on your wedding night.
No, you aren’t married.
No, you aren’t getting married anytime soon. Honestly, you have your doubts about marriage in general.
Yes, you still like kids and want some for yourself someday. You still aren’t quite ready.
You have a niece and a nephew, and they’re wonderful.
Yes. Be honest with yourself.
Um. Not huge, but decently sized, yes.
That’s not really a complete question. Are you really that embarrassed? I’m you, I’m not going to judge — OK, that’s not true, I judge you all the time. But I won’t this time.
Is that all?
OK, sorry. Twenty, almost twenty-one.
Fifteen, unless you count spin-the-bottle.
It was at Michael’s birthday. It was not with Michael. Michael’s doing well, he’s in Twilight now. You don’t know what that is, but you will someday. Trust me, you will.
An actor and a “musician.” I’m sorry.
Yes. You want to be a writer. Of course the answer is yes.
Almost seventeen.
Yes, you have. Sorry.
Twenty-five. It was in the middle of Hurricane Sandy.
Not really, no.
I know. I’m sorry.
No, but once the NYPD pulled you off the train because you had your feet up on the seat. You’ve gotten a little better about mouthing off to authority figures. Just do what Jude will tell you to do and “imagine their genitals stapled to their foreheads.”
Yes, you loved it there, even when it was hard. It felt like home.
Yes, you’re still friends!
We’re back to that? A little.
Sushi is still gross.
That’s still gross, too.
No, that isn’t gross anymore.
Well, don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.
You still apologize a lot, sorry.
Fuck yes, you still swear a lot.
Things are better.
Things are MUCH better.
It’s just a number, stop giggling.
You know what, it’s fine. I still giggle when I say “TD Bank” too quickly.
You don’t believe in that anymore.
Fine. It’s pink.
Of course.
April is the worst.
No, and I know that’s going to hurt to hear. I’m sorry.
No, you don’t have panic attacks all the time. You have them a few times a year, now, and when you do, you know how to handle them.
You still have some symptoms, yes, but again, you know how to handle it.
You don’t have to be ashamed of it. Having OCD is like having diabetes. Besides, so many cool or famous people have it, too!
You’re not alone.
Let’s end on a perfect square, I know that will make you happy. Yes, I do: stop trying to control everything. Allow yourself to make mistakes. Being insecure doesn’t make you more endearing. Forgiveness feels GREAT. Please take time to enjoy being your age. Things might suck right now, but they will be better someday. And even when they’re not, at least you can always write about it.
Again, congratulations, we did it!
Future Mara
P.S. Please don’t try to kill me in some kind of time travel paradox.
He always reminded me a little of my father.
Robin Williams, as I knew him, was warm, gentle, expressive, nurturing, and brilliant. While it can be hard for me to remember filming Doubtfire, I’ve been flooded with memories in the past few days. It’s humbling to know I am one of the few people who was there for these moments, that he’s no longer around to share them.
He was a creator as much as a performer. After one of my friends posted Robin’s “impression of a hot dog” on Facebook, I realized she had no idea that wasn’t in the script. It was supposed to be a monologue where he listed every voice he could do, but he decided to take the ones he’d been given, add more of his own, and just riff for a while. Chris Columbus, our director, would let Robin perform one or two takes with what was written, then do as many more takes as Robin had variations. Sometimes I wonder why they didn’t give him at least partial screenwriting credit.
He was so quick and prolific, coming up with so many lines and bits even though there was no way we could use them all. At the end of the first dinner scene (), he uses chopsticks like antennae to make me smile. That was a reference to a take that didn’t end up in the film, where Robin was supposed to make a speech about his new job boxing and shipping cans, then turn it into a song. He went off book, as always, and before we knew what he was doing, the chopsticks were by his ears and he was freestyle rapping from the point of view of an ant railing against the humans who kept stepping on its friends.
Robin would do anything to make me and the other kids laugh. Those
in Aladdin‘s “Friend Like Me”? That must have been his suggestion, because Robin made those in real life. He’d break them out between takes to entertain us between takes. “I don’t like you,” his left hand would say to his right. “You smell like poop!” I would laugh uproariously — I was five, so poop jokes were the height of hilarity — as his right hand yelled back “Well, there’s no toilet paper at my house!” When he saw me watching him work on his laptop during downtime, he played a sound file of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz screeching “You wicked old witch!” When we were filming the petting zoo birthday scene, he fed a pony oats out of his hat, then held it out to me and said, “Wanna wear it?” When we were filming the climactic dinner party scene, he would make his carpet bag bark like a dog under the table, then order it to be quiet. He seemed to know instinctively what we would find funny, and never had to resort to saying anything that was inappropriate for children. He was, after all, a father himself.
Robin was so on so much of the time that I was surprised to hear my mother describe him as “shy.” “When he talks to you,” she told her friends, “he’ll be looking down at his shoes the whole time.” I figured he must have been different with grown-ups. I wouldn’t see that side of him myself until a few years later, when I was invited to be part of a table read of What Dreams May Come. He came alive in the reading, and had us all laughing at lunch, but my strongest impression came when we saw each other for the first time that day. Robin crossed to me from across the room, got down to my level, and whispered “Hi, how are you?” He asked how my family was doing, how school was, never raising his voice and only sometimes making eye contact. He seemed so vulnerable. “So this is what Mom meant,” I thought. It was as if I was seeing him for the first time. He was a person now.
As of this past Monday, Robin and I had not spoken in a few years. We weren’t on bad terms, we had just lost track of each other. He was working in films still, I was not anymore, he still lived in California, I’d moved probably nine times since I last had his contact information. The last time I saw him, I was a freshman at NYU and he was filming August Rush in Washington Square Park. I went up to him while he was walking away from the set to his trailer, and called his name. He turned around, not sure what to make of the girl in the glasses and NYU hoodie calling him like she knew him.
“It’s me!” I said. “It’s Mara.”
“Oh, Mara!” He told me how grown up I looked and asked how I liked NYU. It was small talk, but something about the way Robin looked at me made it feel like he truly cared. This was someone for whom everything mattered.
I wish we had talked more. I wish I had reached out more. Being a Worst Case Scenario kind of person, I’ve worried so many times about losing so many people I care about, but I never could imagine losing Robin.
My grieving has been private. I kept off my public Facebook page and my Twitter and tried to reading or watching avoid any entertainment media. Doing interviews is usually fun and easy for me, but I didn’t feel I could do any then. If I was crying seeing Robin’s face on the Daily News, I would not have been able to keep it together on cable news, and people didn’t need to see that.
Lisa Jakub, my big sister in Doubtfire and my honorary big sister in real life, wrote
about her experiences with him and was able to appear on TV. She said all the things I couldn’t. It reminded me how she handled the Doubtfire 2 announcement a few months back with such grace, while I ended up coming off a lot more brusque and dismissive than I had wanted. Life imitating art, I joked with her: in Doubtfire, she was the more mature older sister, while I was the little one who always blurted out the wrong thing. One of us cautious and pensive, one of us quick and outspoken.
Much like the two sides of Robin, as my brother Danny pointed out: “You guys were him.”
I had thought maybe the next time I saw Robin I would explain myself to him, let him know that I had loved working with him but didn’t feel like we could do it again, and that being in major studio films again meant a level of scrutiny I didn’t think I could deal with. I wanted to apologize and know he understood. It hurts to know I can’t.
I’m glad people are starting to talk seriously about mental health, depression, and suicide. I’ve discussed my OCD, anxiety, and depression in the past and will continue to do so more in the future. Mental health needs to be taken as seriousl the two are inseparable. But I am afraid people will romanticize what Robin went through. Please don’t romanticize mental anguish. I know many people who think to be an artist means you have to suffer, or at least wallow in old miseries. It’s not only an incorrect assumption — there are comedians who had happy upbringings, I swear — but it will only hurt them and the people who care about them. Artists who struggled with mental illness, trauma, disease, addiction (often the latter is a way of self-medicating after the first three) did not want or welcome it. I don’t know if I’d consider myself an artist, but speaking as someone who sometimes makes stuff, my best work is created when I’m content and contemplative, looking back on painful times rather than in the middle of them.
To focus on someone’s pain instead of their accomplishments is an insult to them. As my friend Patrick put it, a person is a person first and a story second.
In the past few days I have said “thanks” and “I love you” to so many people. I’m fortunate to know people who care and have been so good to me, and it’s heartening to know there are so many people who will miss Robin, too. I heard about his death from a comedian friend, and got the specifics from my brother Danny. Both had reasons to love him, and I was glad I heard about it from them rather than the internet. Though once I got on Facebook that night, I was immediately overwhelmed with how many people had kind words to say about him. Many of my friends are comedians who were inspired by him, but others just loved his movies and comedy and had since their childhoods. If you can affect someone when they’re young, you are in their heart forever. It is remarkable how many lives Robin touched, and how many people said, just as I had, that he reminded them of their fathers.
I suppose — could I really end this any other way? — we’re all his goddamn kids, too.
Everybody grieves in their own way. When I heard about Robin’s death, I was shocked, confused angry, regretful, and above all, sad. All I wanted was to talk to my family and friends and cry. A few news outlets asked if I would be willing to talk about him on the air, and while I usually like interviews, I knew I wasn’t in a good place to do that. I still (a whole three days later) don’t want to do any. It’s too soon, and I need my own time to process it all. I will, however, be sharing some of my memories about him on this blog sometime soon.
While Robin and I had not talked in a few years, there is no question he had a great impact on my life. He was as warm and talented as everyone says, and a joy to be around. It’s as if my favorite teacher died.
More to come later.
So, once again, it’s been a while.
But can you blame me? (Well, I guess you couldn’t, but don’t.) I’ve been busy. First, I’m promoting and performing my storytelling and comedy show What Are You Afraid Of? It’s all about fears and phobias, dealing with them, and laughing at them. If you are in the New York area and like to see it live, the show is every third Sunday of the month at
in Brooklyn, and we also will be at ! If you think this sounds interesting and would like to bring it to a theater near you, or a college — and , and would love to — feel free to contact us through our !
Then there are other people’s shows. Two of my most recent favorites can be found online: , where I discussed my pretty terrible first boyfriend, and I did an interview with ! (Yes, the episode is called Boobs, but it makes sense in context. I’m sorry anyway, Dad.) I talked about OCD, filming Matilda, dealing with my mother’s death, being close with my family, internet harassment, Katy Perry, foot fetishists, my pick-up line, nerds, Alec Baldwin,
Gary Oldman being terrible, The Americans, American Ninja Warrior, and had a great time. It’s probably the most honest and comprehensive interview I’ve ever done, so if you want an insight into what I’m like when I’m not hiding behind my cat-hair covered MacBook Pro, check it out.
There’s also the book, which has occupied a lot of my time. But nothing’s final, and let’s not jinx it. Just promise me you’ll buy it.
Now, on another note…
When I was little, all I ever wanted was to hang out with the big kids. My brothers and their friends and girlfriends were all so cool, so smart, so funny, and I wanted so badly to be part of their world. I’m lucky to have had them indulge me every so often, letting me come along on their adventures, letting me feel like I was cool, smart, and funny, too.
A year and a half ago, I found a Twitter account that tweeted hilarious, dark, deceptively profound things. I wanted to know more about them, so I listened to their podcast. It was exactly my sense of humor and immediately my new favorite thing. I gushed about it to my friends, many of whom became immediate fans as well. “I feel like this fills a void I didn’t know I had,” one said. I agreed, there really wasn’t anything like it.
Well, maybe there was: I soon found out they were associated with one of my favorite theater groups, the . I’ve had friends in the Neos, so I was able to meet them and tell them how much I loved what they did. I must have been feeling bold, because I asked them to let me know if they ever wanted or needed a voice-over actress.
To my surprise, they did.
A year ago, I sat with Joseph Fink in a small recording room and tried to be as creepy as possible. A month ago, I performed for 2,500 people at a Broadway venue with some wonderfully talented people as part of the Welcome to Night Vale two year anniversary show. A week ago, I performed in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa for thousands of people. The show has grown so much in the past year, gathering a rabid fan base, and it’s still dark, profound, and hilarious. Joseph, Jeffrey, Cecil, and Meg, the people who created Night Vale and got it started, deserve all the good that’s come of it. They are the rare people who are as kind and giving as they are talented and intelligent. All the people I’ve met or gotten to know through the show — Dylan, Symphony, Jackson, Hal, Marissa, Lauren O., Lauren S., Kevin, Jon, Eliza, Jasika, Jason, Marc with a C, Mark with a K, all of them — have been the same.
Every time I do a Night Vale show, I feel like I’m once again a little girl, surrounded by the cool older kids, awed by them and their talents. But they have indulged me and taken me along on their adventures. For that, I say thank you. It’s been an honor as well as a blast.
Performing at the Town Hall show. Photo sent to me from someone's tumblr. If you took it, let me know so I can credit you!
I make really good chocolate chip cookies. After years of trying different recipes, I have finally found one that yields delicious, chewy cookies just like my mom used to make. My cupcakes aren’t bad, either, and I’ve been teaching myself how to make gluten-free, sugar-free, and vegan baked treats for my friends with dietary restrictions and my friends who like to follow fads and complain. Baking calms me down when I’m nervous and makes my friends happy, so I love it.
I’m a good baker, but I am a terrible cook. When I was a nanny, the mom had to tell me to stick to pre-packaged afterschool snacks because I couldn’t make popcorn without setting off the smoke alarm.
I’ve heard it’s a left-brain/right-brain
kind of thing: people who like cooking like playing it by ear and improvising, while people who like baking tend to be goal-oriented and want to know exactly what their outcome will be. Cooking is an art, but baking is a science, and I’m probably the most scientifically-minded person to graduate with a degree in Drama from NYU.
Living in New York means lots of take-out, but I have been consciously trying to start making food at home. My crock pot has been a blessing (as has this ), but I can’t remember life before my food processor. Even when I don’t feel like cooking (which is most of the time), I end up using it at least once a week for smoothies. This past Saturday, after a long day at Publicolor, a smoothie was all wanted. There are several tiny “organic” stores selling juices and blended drinks, but since I’ve been trying to stick to my “at least one new crock pot recipe a week” routine, I decided to buy food for the week and make one at home.
Now, I was really tired. All day I’d climbed up and down three flights of stairs, and I’d even nodded off on the train ride home. When I got to the produce section, I stood there for several minutes before realizing they did not have spinach. It’s a very small store, but this was unusual and disappointing. Smoothies are one of the only ways I get my vegetables. They did seem to have other greens, though, so I grabbed the first bunch I saw in the section labelled “kale” and put it in my basket. Easy enough. I got some more food for me (and my cats), paid, and left.
Once I got home I got out the food processor and started making one of my favorite smoothies: it has kale, apple, apple juice, a little cinnamon, and tastes like chunky applesauce. Something seemed wrong right away, though, because instead of the usual bright green, the mixture was more of a nasty puce color. The greens had seemed to be yellowing, but I’d made smoothies with yellowing kale before and been fine. The consistency seemed off, too. But it was a smoothie, and I figured there wasn’t any way I could have screwed up a smoothie.
Then I took a sip.
My mouth immediately started to burn. The smoothie tasted the way apple cider vinegar smells, like it’s just singed your nose hairs. Usually the apple masked the taste of kale, but this time there was another strong flavor, something painfully overpowering. It stung my throat as it went down, and tears came to my eyes. How could it hurt to drink a smoothie? What had I done wrong? Too much cinnamon? It had to be. I’d made this hundreds of times, and it was the same every time. “Maybe it’s not that bad,” I thought, and took a larger gulp. No, it was that bad. For some reason, I was reminded of Futurama’s
song. Maybe because drinking it felt like a punishment.
Whatever it was, it was done now. I dumped what was left in my glass and the food processor (i.e., most of it) down the sink and started up a new batch. This time, I’d pay careful attention to the ratio of cinnamon and apples. I reached into the fridge to get more greens, and that’s when I saw the problem.
I had not made a kale smoothie, I had made a mustard smoothie. It’s not that I don’t like mustard (though I’m a complete wimp when it comes to anything remotely spicy, the honey mustard at Cosi has made me cry) but it’s not something I want in large doses, and not anything
anyone would want to drink. There’s a time and a place for mustard. !
On the bright side, I unintentionally consumed some mustard greens, which are even healthier than kale. And I finally have a cooking experience that tops the time I was sixteen and put French Vanilla non-dairy creamer in macaroni and cheese because we were out of milk. At some point, though, I’d like to have positive cooking experiences.
Now I just need to find a foolproof crock pot recipe that uses mustard greens.
WARNING: this entry might be disturbing or triggering for some readers. There will be no graphic details, but a crime was committed and will be discussed.
Nobody likes their middle school. But in retrospect,
was actually a pretty good place. We had encouraging teachers, a nice campus, fun electives, and only one or two bomb threats in my entire three years there.
Sex education came in seventh grade. We spent half the year in science class, where Mr. Allen managed to suck all the fun and wonder out of the discovery of the natural world, and half in “Health” class, where we learned about our bodies. It wasn’t especially comprehensive: abstinence was the rule, and we never learned how birth control worked and or how to put on a condom. But it still wasn’t bad. I learned about the placebo effect, that a fever is actually a defense mechanism, and why contracting herpes is a bigger deal than contracting chlamydia.
Our Health teacher was Mrs. Moretti, a good-humored woman in her sixties. I was glad it was her: our other option was Mrs. Byers, a tough, chain-smoking woman who had taught me Cooking the previous year and yelled at me for using the wrong kind of binder. Her husband also worked at Jordan, teaching Industrial Arts, and both of them looked as if they hadn’t noticed the seventies ended. She had feathered blonde hair, he had an afro, and they dressed like they were in a educational filmstrip. There seemed something uncanny about them, especially after I heard rumors Mr. Byers threw chairs across the room when he got angry.
Still, it was a little strange to have someone so much older talking to us about changes that she hadn’t gone through in years. Mrs. Moretti must have suspected this, because after one exercise where we broke off into single-sex teams
and listed everything we wanted in a girlfriend or boyfriend (one boy put “soft hair” as a top priority, and a girl on my team kept insisting we put “big feet”), she invited another teacher to talk to us about it.
“It’s been a while since I’ve had to think about what I want in a husband, so I’ve brought in someone who just got married. Please welcome Mrs. Beck.”
Mrs. Beck was a tall, buxom blonde woman in her early twenties, and I knew her only by sight. She taught sixth grade English and History, but was new to the school and didn’t teach the so-called “gifted classes”. She seemed nice, but I knew nothing about her as a teacher.
“I talked about this with my husband last night,” Mrs. Beck began, “and we decided together on the ten things that matter to us most.”
Her list went from ten to one. Number ten was “attractiveness,” but when one of the girls raised her hand and said “You mean looks?” Mrs. Beck said, “Not just looks. There’s more to an attraction than that.”
Ever cynical, I rolled my eyes. If that were true, if looks weren’t that important, more boys would have liked me. Besides, it didn’t seem like there was much to the boys I knew besides looks. Girls matured faster than boys, so if we wanted someone with a personality, there weren’t many options at David Starr Jordan Middle School — or really, any middle school. Middle school boys smelled bad, were mean, and thought Pokemon was high art. There were a few nice guys, but no one I liked in that way. The romances I imagined always happened with older boys, or celebrities, or boys at another school where “Being Nice to Girls (Even The Ugly Ones)” and “Washing Your Hands After You Use the Bathroom” were part of the curriculum.
Mrs. Beck went on to describe some more positive qualities, and while I could see the importance of some of them, I was still skeptical. Maybe she was lying to make herself look good, or maybe she was being honest and I just wouldn’t see it until I got older. Either way, by the time she reached the top three, my mind had wandered to more interesting places, like which brother on Malcolm and the Middle was the cutest. I would never be able to remember what she had said was most important.
Time went by. I finished seventh grade, finished middle school, “fell in love” in high school, fell in love for real in college, and did find my priorities changing. Someone could be gorgeous but a terrible person, and I’d find myself less attracted to them. Exy seemed only kind of cute when we first met, but the longer we dated the more beautiful I found him. Once or twice I thought back to Mrs. Beck, and thought maybe had been telling the truth, and had been right.
Except she wasn’t. She really wasn’t.
Ten years after health class ended, one of my friends posted a news story about Mrs. Beck on Facebook. The woman who told my class what really mattered was trust and communication and intelligence had just . She would be going to jail and registering as a sex offender for the rest of her life.
I couldn’t believe it, and neither could anyone else from Burbank. My hometown is notorious . We’d had
before, but nothing like this. There was the unfortunately common response (once ) that the victim, being a young boy, had “wanted it.” I heard too many jokes from men about how they wished they could have been in his place, or how fitting it was that Jordan’s school mascot was the Cougar. Did these men know any fourteen-year-old boys, I wondered. They’re still very much children, and taking advantage of one is nothing less than child rape.
It was hard to know whether I should be more horrified — she was an authority figure taking advantage of a child who had trusted her — or baffled. What could this woman in her thirties, seemingly happily married, have been thinking? Was there something wrong with her mind, some kind of chemical imbalance? There was no evidence she had raped any other students, so maybe it was less sexual compulsion and more desire. But what could she have found to desire in a middle school student? Surely nothing she had listed that day in Health class.
When I think back to that exercise, the other thing I remember is overhearing one of the boys whispering to a friend that his all-male group had lied. They didn’t care if a girl was smart or fun or nice, they just wanted someone cute. That didn’t seem fair for several reasons, and I brought it up to Mrs. Moretti before I left class.
“Jack said they made it up, they didn’t really want any of the nice things they said they did. They don’t care about anything besides how she looks. They were lying.”
“They could be lying about lying,” she said. “A lot of boys want to seem tough. They don’t want to admit to wanting something nice.”
I now think Mrs. Moretti was right, but I’ll never know for sure. I wondered the same about Mrs. Beck. But I don’t want to know anymore.
It’s been a busy few weeks. So much has happened that’s blog-worthy, I couldn’t write separate entries for all of them — or perhaps writing for Cracked has gone to my head. Anyway, here’s what’s been happening.
1. San Francisco and Night Vale Live
I have been to San Francisco twice in the past two months, and I want to go again soon. My sister lives there, which is reason enough to visit, but the beautiful scenery, friendly people
, perpetual cozy sweater weather, drag queen showings of Showgirls, sourdough bread, Mexican food, and memories of being five years old and filming Doubtfire also keep me coming back. I’m married to New York, but the Bay Area is the guy who went through my mind as I said my vows.
While I was there, I was fortunate to have the chance to perform in a live show of Welcome to Night Vale in the Haight. It was hosted by the , a lovely little bookshop I highly recommend. The show was funny and creepy, as it always is, everyone loved , and while I’ve done all kinds of shows, I have never seen such hardcore fans. So many fans gave me hugs and presents and fan-art, and it was like Beatlemania when Cecil went outside.
Thank you again, San Francisco, for stealing my heart. Just be sure to give it back at some point, I don’t want to hemorrhage.
2. Night Vale Mayoral Debate in New York
As soon as I got back to New York, we started preparing for another Night Vale show: the mayoral debate. My character, The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home, is running for mayor of Night Vale, as is Hiram McDaniels, a five-headed dragon played by Jackson Publick. I like to think we’re the front-runners, especially as our other candidate (played by Marc Evan Jackson) was spirited away for a special mission. (If none of this makes sense to you, stop what you are doing and go listen to .)
There were two shows, and both went well! In addition to Marc and Jackson, we had Kevin R. Free and Jason Webley perform, and several other actors from the Thrilling Adventure Hour: Marc Gagliardi, Annie Savage, Craig Crackowski, and Hal Lublin. New York fans were as adamant and excited as the San Franciscans, though a little less huggy.
Joseph and Jeffrey, the show’s writers, joked that meeting fans and signing autographs must make me nostalgic. It did feel familiar.
The only uncomfortable moment happened at the end of the second show. I’d had a nasty cold for the past week, and as Cecil was starting his last paragraph, I started to feel a familiar tightening in my chest. I didn’t want to distract from the show by having a coughing fit, so I held it in as best I could. My chest got tighter, my throat constricted, and my best was not good enough: I was having an asthma attack, onstage. My vision blurred and I swayed, wondering if I should reach out for something in case I blacked out, and hoping Cecil would do something completely out of character and say his lines faster.
Cecil wished Night Vale a good night and I managed to cough as we stepped away from the mics and the audience roared. My eyes were still watering when Jackson looked over at me and smiled. He must have thought I was moved by the show and the audience’s reaction, but I killed that pretty quickly by mouthing “I’m having an asthma attack.”
As soon as the applause died down, I ran offstage, rummaged through my purse and took my inhaler. My breathing returned to normal and I performed in the second show without any problems. And when I needed to cough, I did.
3. Thrilling Adventure Hour
A few months back the nice people at the
contacted Joseph to say they’d be in town for New York Comic Con, and asked if Cecil and I wanted to be on the show.
I said yes, and I’m glad I did: it was one of the most fun shows I’ve done — an old-timey radio serial — and when I said “the nice people,” I meant it. Paul F. Tompkins is as kind and welcoming as your favorite funny uncle (but a much sharper dresser), Jackson Publick is far cooler than I’ll ever be, but was still a nice guy, Scott Adsit is warm and witty, Paget Brewster and Maria Thayer are as sweet as they are gorgeous, both Paul and Storm are fun and funny, and Jonathan Coulton is friendly with a great sense of humor and was willing to listen to me babble on about my personal connections with his songs. It’s rare to find people who are talented, funny, and kind — I know about three happy and well-adjusted New York comedians — but they were all of those.
I only had initial reservations about one person…
4. Wilson v. Glass, round three
Backstage banter is a big part of live shows, and we got a good head start at the Night Vale show. Craig, Hal, Jackson, Marc Evan, Annie, Marc Gagliardi and I joked around, and they expressed their admiration at Night Vale’s sudden, overwhelming success.
Cecil said “We were number one on iTunes for a while, but This American Life has replaced us again. We knew that would happen, though. It’s like the Meryl Streep of podcasts.”
“Right,” I said, “And Night Vale is more like Jennifer Lawrence.”
Cecil laughed. “That’s exactly right! We’re the new hot thing, but Meryl and This American Life always win.”
“Oh, speaking of This American Life,” Marc Gagliardi said, “Guess who’s going to be a guest star at the show tomorrow? Ira Glass!”
“Oh shit!” I yelled, almost involuntarily. “Really? Oh shit… oh shit!”
Marc looked surprised. “Isn’t that good news?”
“We… ,” I said.
Marc, Cecil, and everyone else from Thrilling Adventure Hour laughed when I told them the story, but I was actually nervous all the next day. I had already been thinking about taking that letter off this site. Open letters, as a concept, seem a little passive-aggressive to me now, and I’ve had some bizarre and unpleasant encounters with fans, too.
He’s probably just an awkward person, I figured. I understand that: I’m pretty awkward myself.
Still, as soon as I arrived at The Bell House, I kept glancing at the door, waiting for him to enter. When he did, I noticed his suit pocket was ripped, almost literally hanging by a thread.
“That was probably my dog,” he explained. “She’s a pit bull, and usually sweet, but… you know.” Yes, he was an awkward person. But one who rescues shelter animals.
I wasn’t sure what to say when he sat next to me. My friends had suggested I not bring up our past at all, and just try to be friendly with him.
“Sorry about your pocket,” I said.
“Yeah, it was my dog. You look very nice,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’m Ira,” he said.
“I’m Mara,” I said.
“Have we met before?” He said.
“We have,” I admitted, “But it was under awkward circumstances.” He looked thoughtful, and I went on. “It was at Mike Birbiglia’s show, and I wanted to get your attention…”
“And then you wrote about it,” he said .
“Yeah…” I said, but he didn’t seem upset or irritated. It was just an observation. I had written about it.
“I’m really sorry about that,” he said, and seemed sincere. “I was just really distracted.”
“No, I’m sorry, too,” I said, and we both stumbled over our words and laughed. The tension was broken.
“So are you an actor?” He said.
“Kind of,” I said. “I write now, but I used to be a child actor.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, I started when I was five, and I was in a few movies. But as I got older I found it wasn’t fun anymore, especially after my mother died…” Was I telling Ira Glass my life story? Maybe he just has that effect on people. It is his job.
“But you’re probably not fazed by celebrities,” he said.
“That’s true,” I said. “But I was fazed by you!”
He laughed. “I’m not a celebrity!”
“Well, my friends like to joke that we’re in a feud, that you’re my nemesis,” I said.
“We should take a picture of the two of us fighting,” he said.
“Yes, we should!”
And so we did. Yes, that’s John Hodgman photobombing.
I think this means we’re cool now! If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s . Or at least acquaintances.
5. My Cracked Article on OCD
I was diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder when I was twelve. My symptoms have waned, so what bothers me most now is not residual symptoms, but its misrepresentation in popular culture. The disorder that caused me so much misery for so long is seen as a mere personality quirk or a punchline. I have been so vocal about this on my twitter account the editors at Cracked suggested I write about it.
It’s a topic I’m passionate about, and I like to think I’ve done some good with this article. To go a little further, though, here are some good resources if you think you or someone you know might have OCD or anxiety:
– This has all kinds of information, and .
– Reading and working with this book will alleviate OCD symptoms. A summary is available .
– Get this if you have panic attacks. It’s helped me, and it’s helped several people I know.
– A fiction book written by my friend (and Matilda co-star) Kira’s mom! This is another one that helped me a lot.
– Find a therapist by location and specialty.
has one, too, but I think it’s limited to North America.
You can get help and things can get better.
6. Elisa and Paul’s Wedding
Last weekend I went down to Baltimore to see my friends Paul and Elisa get married. Yes, that
and . It wasn’t a huge wedding, but there were enough nerds and internet celebrities there that some started calling it WeddingCon 2013.
After the funny, heartfelt vows, we were told we could dance or could explore the catacombs where Edgar Allen Poe and several hundred citizens of Baltimore were buried. You can probably figure which most of us chose.
The church and its surrounding buildings were beautiful, if a bit dreary. I had expected this of Baltimore. Though, to be honest, all I had known of it was based on my brother’s stories from Johns Hopkins, visiting once ten years ago for his graduation, and what I’d seen on The Wire. I knew it could be a pretty depressing place to live, but figured that was due to corrupt politicians, industrialization, and deindustrialization. Not so, said our cheerfully morbid tour guide. Baltimore was dark and disturbing from the beginning.
“There was a man named Frank,” she said, “And he was a — well, the elementary school students ask me if he was crazy, but I like to think of him as an entrepreneur. Anyway, Frank was a graverobber…”
After the talk of rabies and anti-graverobbing precautions, I took pictures of Poe’s grave for my goth-hippie sister, then went inside for wine and cake. Everyone all stayed up late talking and drinking, and I got to know some wonderful new people. The next day I got a ride up to Pennsylvania to see my brother and his wife and swap Baltimore stories.
I do have to admit Charm City has its charms. A dark and depressing sort of charm, but charm nonetheless.
7. Ruby the Kitten
For months, my roommate and I have been talking about getting another cat. Our giant ginger tabby, Milo, has been seeming a bit antsy lately, and we wondered if he was lonely. It’s wholly possible we are both soft touches for cute small animals
and are projecting our desire for another one onto Milo. But we haven’t done much besides wistfully browse Petfinder and try to pet any passing stray/outdoor cats
When I came home from Pennsylvania this past Wednesday, my roommate sent me a text telling me she had found a mother cat and several kittens in a nearby alley. I joined her there, and we opened up a few cans of food for them.
“They look sick,” she said. “I think that one has an eye infection, and they’re all sneezing.”
“Should we try to get them and take them to the vet?” I said. They were eating the canned food, a sign they could live without their feral mother. The tiniest one crawled a little closer, and my roommate picked her up by the scruff. The kitten didn’t fight, she let herself be held. After a little discussion, I ran back upstairs for Milo’s cat carrier, and we took her to a local vet.
The doctor inspected the kitten, confirmed my suspicions she was a girl, and diagnosed her with an eye infection, ringworm, and a respiratory infection that could have progressed into Pneumonia.
“It’s a good thing you brought her in when you did,” the vet said. “She wouldn’t have lasted long on the streets.”
Maybe it was hearing that, or the way the kitten purred and kneaded on us once we got her home, or (more cynically) the sunk cost of her vet bills, but we decided to keep her. She’s looking more lively since we’ve given her medicine, and on my sister’s suggestion, we’ve named her Ruby.
Day six. She's all wrapped up like a kitty burrito.
New friends, new fans, new shows, a new article, and a new kitten. It’s been a good month.
It was the summer of 2000, and my sister and I were bored. We had been sitting in London Heathrow Airport for hours, and I had already read and reread my UK copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire twice. We would be there for hours more, and swapping Rocko’s Modern Life quotes back and forth was getting old. We needed to pass the time.
“Let’s make up a story,” I said. We did that a lot. Anna and I had created a talk show called “The Cupid and Angel Show” (she was a wisecracking, cherubic cupid, and I was Angel, the straight man host), and a comic called The Pie Man, which came out of some non-sequitur thought bubbles Anna had added to human characters from a 101 Dalmatians coloring book. The Pie Man was a farce about a man who loved pie so much it got in the way of everything else. We had one issue — where the Pie Man was mistaken for a minister and wreaked havoc while trying to perform a wedding — and we thought it was hilarious.
Most of the time, though, I came up with the story. Anna’s expertise was artwork: at seven, my younger sister had become better at drawing and painting than I was or ever would be. She took a lot of pride in it, and when I was in the mood to be a good big sister, I did, too.
“I have a better idea,” I said. “Let’s make a comic.”
Anna’s eyes lit up. “Yeah! You can make the story and I’ll do the drawings! What should it be about?”
Usually when I wrote something, I came up with an idea in advance. When I had been younger, it was similar to stories by whichever authors I had been binge-reading at the time —
Beverly Cleary, or Judy Blume, or Bruce Coville. Other times it was about whatever was happening in my life, like my pet hamster getting a new cage, or my brothers going to an R.E.M. concert, or graduating from elementary school. As I got older, inspiration came to me at random, and it was a matter of following the most interesting ideas.
This time, though, my thoughts returned to an earlier story I had written. Our brother Jon was a big X-Files fan, and “” was one of his favorite episodes. After maybe the fifth time we watched it (rereading, rewatching, and repeating run in the family), and reading a few bloodsucker stories in , I started to write a family drama about vampires.
My main character was a young vampire boy who lived a fairly normal life with his sister and mother. They lived in a community of vampires and had two kinds of bites, one that killed and one that would turn someone else into a vampire. But they also reproduced the way heterosexual humans did, and grew up the same way, probably because biological science was hard enough for me as it was and mythological biology would be even harder. The conflict was the boy turning out to have a long-lost mortal father, making him a half-vampire and an outcast. He went searching for his father and bit him so he could come back and live with the vampires. I saw this as a happy ending.
“Maybe something about vampires?” I said. “Like… vampires living a normal life and going to high school and stuff? Just in their own little world?”
“OK,” Anna said, and started to sketch a vampire girl in a sort of gothic schoolgirl uniform.
“Let’s call her something like Dracula, but a girl’s name. Like she was named after him… Like Dracie,” I said, rhyming it with “Gracie”.
“Yeah,” said Anna. “And maybe she has a best friend named… Drusilla? But they call her Dru?”
“Yeah! And let’s have them going to a History of Vampires class,” I said, J.K. Rowling on the brain. “That’s where we can have a teacher talk about what our vampires are like, so people reading it won’t be confused.” Exposition was so much easier when you just told people what was happening.
“What are we going to call it, though?” Anna said.
“I dunno. For now, let’s just call it, like… ‘Fangs A Lot’ or something.” It was our working title, a dumb name, but not any dumber than .
Anna started on a drawing of Dru, who might have been problematically prettier than Dracie. “Do we want any boys?” she said.
Oh right, boys. “Yeah, we do. But this is high school, so they’ll have to have boyfriends and stuff…” An inspiration struck. “Oh, what if there’s a new boy in school, and his name is Timber or Silver or something, and Dracie really likes him? And he likes her back, but then she sees him walk by a mirror and he reflects! And she realizes he’s not a vampire at all, he’s a werewolf!”
Yes, that afternoon in Heathrow Airport, my sister and I invented teen paranormal romance.
Sure, you can point to Anne Rice or Francesca Lia Block, but I don’t mean decently-written fantasy or magical realism. I mean Twilight or Hush, Hush or Fifty Shades Of Grey (which I consider paranormal, it’s completely divorced from any realistic depictions of sex, relationships, BDSM, the United States, or affluence). Love triangles and secret identities and wars between mythical creatures? Anna and I had that first.
Anna and I never went beyond basic sketches. But if we had, and if we had submitted “Fangs A Lot” before Stephenie Meyer submitted Twilight, that genre could have been ours. People would have come to conventions dressed like Dracie. Teen girls would write fanfiction about the History of Vampires teacher hooking up with Dru on her eighteenth birthday, and it would have been accepted because
and aging was canon. There could have been a movie. We would have left Robert Pattinson to live a quiet life known only as “that guy who was in Goblet of Fire”, instead trying to get Joseph Gordon-Levitt to play Timber or Silver or whatever his name was and Evan Rachel Wood to play Dracie. We would have failed, because they’re only in good movies. We would have become billionaires, anyway.
Yes, we could have created paranormal romance. Instead, we grew up.
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