Day 29: Remembering My Unorthodox First Crush

Today started out the same way as many before it, with me stepping on a Lego. 

Stepping on small, plastic,virtually invisible toy is merely a side effect of parenting on a good day, but on a less patient days, it's the bane of my existence. Since today fell squarely into the latter category, after I stepped on the offending Lego, I calmly suggested (read: demanded with my voice just teetering on the edge of a shriek) that my kids pick up their rooms a bit. The request was followed by a brief flurry of activity, and then full-on silence. Anyone who has children knows that silence is actually the worst sound in the world when it comes to kids. When they're loud, you know exactly what they're doing and that no one is choking on anything. Silence usually equals some kind of trouble. 

Naturally, this silence needed to be further investigated. I went down the hall to Ben's room to find it still looked as though it had been devastated by some kind of natural disaster (a Thomas the Train hurricane by the looks of it) and completely Ben-less. I continued down the hall to Layla's room, where I found a closed door. I opened it to discover Ben, rapidly moving around Layla's room gathering her toys, books, and loose shoes and putting them back in their places while Layla perched on her bed like a Princess, reading a book. As you might expect, I asked Layla what was going on. She waved her hand dismissively in the general direction of Ben, her eyes never leaving the pages of her Fancy Nancy book. "I gave Ben a dollar to clean my room for me" she said casually, as if paying her brother for his manual labor was nothing unusual. For a second, I just stood there, blinking at her. I knew that I probably should have been mad, but I wasn't. I probably should have lectured her about responsibilities and not trying to pawn them off on her brother, but it's hard to lecture someone when you feel like you're on the brink of a full-on belly laugh. Not to mention the fact that I actually kind of admired her for thinking it up. Ben was doing the work willingly (because one dollar for a kid equals a million dollars for an adult in terms of awesomeness) and she was compensating him for said work. Everybody wins. Six-year-old: 1, World: 0.

I've continued through the day amused by Layla's antics, but a thought has nagged at me. I keep thinking that it's an indescribably weird experience when you begin to see parts of your personality in your kid's personality. It manages to be both the coolest thing ever and most terrifying thing you could ever imagine. You discover qualities you never knew you had, both good and less than flattering. As she gets older, Layla turns into me more and more. Sometimes Josh just looks back and forth between the two of us, shaking his head, probably imagining what it's going to be like when she's seventeen and I'm threatening to rip my hair out. And while I'm not exactly looking forward to that bleak but inevitable day myself, I'm more freaked out by day-to-day changes and the fact that in many ways I feel like I'm watching my life play out all over again; I'm just playing a slightly different role this time.

It's funny that the day I realized my daughter is officially turning into me happens to be the same day as Peter Jenning's 75 birthday. The connection to those two things may not be obvious, but bear with me.

Last year, I accidentally wrote my favorite blog. I had been on a rather rant-y streak (try to contain your shock) and was starting to worry that constantly being up on my soap box was going to start giving me nose bleeds. I was looking to lighten up a heavy mood by encouraging the world to laugh at me, much more than I was concerned with hitting one out of the park, writing wise. And in a lot of ways, the blog wasn't a home run. It didn't have a billion views (we all know how obsessed with statistics I suddenly am) nor did it afford me sudden blog fame and fortune. But I didn't care because I loved it and I loved writing it. It was the most fun, stress-free writing experience I've ever had. I was Layla's age in this story and like her, I was a curious blend of gutsy and reserved, ready to take on the world and all that came with it. I was also completely enamored with my very first crush:

Many of you may not consider Peter Jennings crush-worthy, and many of you are terribly wrong.

Above all, I loved sharing a story from my personal history that contributes to who I am as a person today. And maybe it was because I was recounting a time when I was braver and less intimidated by the world around me, but writing it made me feel recharged and brave, with the glorious mind-set of a six-year-old. Which is probably why I decided to send the blog to my current favorite news man, who trilled me by actually taking the time to respond, letting me know that he was also a Jennings fan and thanking me for the mention. He also very graciously side-stepped the fact my blog alludes to the fact that I have a huge crush on him (a fact that I didn't realize myself until I woke with a start at 4 AM in a cold sweat, mentally kicking myself and wondering why some brilliant computer person hasn't created an "unsend" button yet). But if he noticed, he was kind enough not to say so. Which just proves that you can't go wrong with the men of the news.

My childhood crush and all-time favorite Newsie passed away several years ago, but if he was alive today he would be 75, and I would probably be on Twitter right now, embarrassing myself by telling him that he's smokin' hot for someone who is 3/4 of a century old. So while it's sad that he won't be surfing his social media accounts soaking up all of his birthday well-wishes, I obviously dodged a bullet because he'll never have to endure mine. Nor will he have to read the story of how someone young enough to be his granddaughter refers to him as her unorthodox first crush when she tells her own daughter all about him.

Which will probably save us both quite a lot of embarrassment. 

Peter Jennings Was The Love Of My Life

Hey guys.

Since my blog has felt pretty heavy the last couple of weeks, I thought I'd lighten it up for a minute. At least until my next rant comes to me. So for now, it's story time.

The following is a true story. Because there are some things you just can't make up.

One of my earliest and clearest memories was the day in kindergarten when I was given a note to take home to my mom. I was a willful and stubborn child, but also obedient to a fault and I lived in constant fear of getting into trouble, so when I was handed a sealed envelope accompanied with a stern look, I panicked. I spent all day obsessing over what I could have done wrong. Did I forget to listen? Talk during story time? Was it because I said I wanted to be a dinosaur when I grew up? Or was it because of the incident?

The day before "the note" a little boy in my class, Tommy Ulander, had called me four eyes during recess, and I had retaliated by calling him impotent. Full disclosure: I (unsurprisingly) had absolutely no idea what impotent meant, but I heard it somewhere and managed to deduce from both the context and the tone of the conversation that it wasn't a good thing. It had the desired effect; Tommy ran off crying and I acted like I could care less even though my stomach felt like I had just eaten a brick that was on fire. I regretted it the second it came out of my mouth and to this day I've always worried that Tommy Ulander did, in fact, grow up to be impotent and is somewhere blaming it all on me. Anyway, I felt like such a pint-sized douche bag for the incident that I think I almost wanted to get caught for it. So when "the note" was presented to me, I figured I was about to be in some serious trouble.

But, as fate would have it, the note had nothing to do with a potentially impotent five-year-old. In fact, I wasn't even in trouble. At least, not directly.

There's no easy way to say this, so I'm just going to say it. When I was five-years-old, I had a huge crush on an iconic television personality. No, not Zack Morris from Saved By The Bell or Leonardo DiCaprio on Growing Pains. My first love was Peter Jennings.

Yes, you're thinking of the right person. Peter Jennings, Canadian, Anchor of CBS World News Tonight from the year before I was born right up until his death seven years ago (I was absolutely devastated when he passed away, by the way). Never mind that he was old enough to be my grandfather, I adored him. I adored him so much that I watched his news broadcasts religiously, soaking up every word. And as it happened, that year there was a lot to soak up.

The year I entered kindergarten was the year the very tumultuous Gulf War began. I watched with fascination as Peter told me all about the Liberation of Kuwait, The Highway of Death, oil, and friendly fire. I don't know if it was the comforting tone of his voice or the way he could make something so complicated sound so amazingly simple, but I never felt scared while watching all of the horrific footage of the war. I actually kind of liked the fact that I knew what grown-ups were talking about for a change. I figured my fellow classmates and friends might also like to know what was going on in the world. So the more I learned, the more I went to school and shared my knowledge during show-and-tell, figuring I was probably doing the world (or at least, my own very limited world) some sort of public service by sharing what I knew.

Enter the problem.

You might not be surprised to learn that other kids my age didn't want to know what I knew. In fact, the things I knew scared the bejesus out of them (apparently, I didn't have Peter's knack for presenting vast knowledge in a simple, non-terrifying way) and worse, my antics really pissed off their parents. In turn, the pissed off parents started complaining to my teachers and demanding an end to my little impromptu news reports. This is where "the note" comes in.

While I have never known the exact wording of "the note", in my imagination it said something like this:

"Dear Debbie: Your insane five-year old future tree-hugger is scaring the crap out of the other children by coming in here and talking about depleting uranium and bulldozer assaults. Perhaps a cuddly teddy bear to bring in and show the children would be a nice change. P.S.: Ever heard of Sesame Street?!"

But that's just a guess.

What I do know is that if "the note" bothered my mom, she didn't show it. I was still allowed to watch the  news (and more importantly, Peter) but she did suggest that I do more showing and less telling. Suffice it to say, I took my Barbies to school the very next day.

To this day, I still like to watch the world news and still have an unexplainable attraction to news anchors that I've never quite been able to pin down. I don't know what it is...Maybe knowing exactly what's going on in the world before anyone else and knowing just how to explain it all to me? A certain sense of authority? Either that, or I have way more Daddy issues than I'm willing to admit.

And while I've loved others (Bill Weir, Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw to name a few), I will always have a special place in my heart for Peter Jennings. He taught me the importance of knowing what was going on in the world around me, no matter how much the events of the world might freak me or anyone else out. He taught me that it was important to have my facts straight, to be well-informed, and that it was okay to be passionate about the issues that were important to me. All-in-all, not too bad for a first crush.