Brain Computer Chip

 

At night, when we’re going to bed, Kiki lies next to me and talks. She’ll talk about anything; like Tetris, a new thought drops, and she’ll share it. I nod off, exhausted, going in and out of consciousness, but I try hard to listen. When she pauses, I say, “I love you, now let’s go to sleep.” 

Her glistening eyes stay fixed on the ceiling as she tries to make all these thoughts fit together, and she says, “Just ten more minutes Mom.”

I wake up early drink coffee and write in my journal in the living room. I hear Geoffrey wake up because he wraps a blanket around him and it drags down the hallway, like a king’s cape. He sits next to me on the couch and starts to chat. Similar to his sister the night before, I can see in his eyes the thoughts coming in. I’ve had a couple of cups of coffee, so I’m more conversational.

Geoffrey is a visionary, a man of tomorrow. These morning discussions I make promises like, ‘If you don’t move to Mars when you grow up, I’ll take care of your children, so you and your partner can work full-time.”

He’ll argue a case for why I should buy a cyber-truck, and ask me if I plan on buying a house in the same gated community as his dad, so he can ride a bike between our homes. I look at him, my thick morning hair ratted like a cave woman, and sip from my “rise and fucking shine” coffee mug, and reassure him, “I’m working on it.”

He asked me if I believed we were living in a simulation, and I judgmentally told him, “I don’t like you watching YouTube.” 

He asked, “What if I'm controlling everything around me with my mind?”

I wanted to say, “If that is true then could you take care of a few people for me… just have them go peacefully in the night?” Instead, I said, “We need to go see Great Grandma Jackie because maybe you’ve lost sight of the ancestral chain that goes back… forever.”

He groaned when I added, “We should go to church more.”

I didn’t shut down his delusions of grandeur because I like how he’s demonstrating an interest in philosophy. It shows that despite my fear that my kids’ brains are prey to the all-consuming predator that is “Online Media Retention,” they do in fact, sit in thought.

I read Brave New World last week after Geoffrey said, “I can’t wait till we all have computer chips in our heads.”

I asked him, “If we all have the same intelligence, who will be the innovators, and who will be the people who vacuum the poop out of the Port-o-Potties?”

He was stumped. So I thought I’d test him, and I said, “Maybe it would be better to give the intelligence only to some people,” and thank goodness, he thought that was a bad idea.

I’m glad I read the book before reading it to the kids because I forgot all about “Chase the Zipper” and how Huxley theorized everyone would turn into detached sluts from the desensitization of sex. Quite the contrary has happened, and young people can’t even be bothered. 

Huxley was right about the pharmacological revolution, and by conditioning people to feel shame when they’re unhappy Soma became another essential food group.

I can’t have a computer chip in my head because of my depraved thoughts, thoughts that I have no control over. I would be thrown in jail the moment the chip was implanted, and when I explain to the thought police (different book, same genre) that I don’t believe these thoughts, they just show up to make me feel like a bad person, they’d throw away the key. It’s a shame, I could be limitless with that computer chip.

Every parent hopes their kids have the intellectual aptitude to get into a great university and make a positive difference in the world. We're too far off from brain-computer chips to change the current college landscape, but after this week when the IVY league school presidents went on an antisemite rampage, they relieved a lot of pressure that these schools are a pinnacle in academic ambition.

The reality is that for a student to get into an elite university, they would have had to spend their teenage years creating a contrived resume. They enter institutions of higher learning with burnout and a robotic mindset. They don’t need a computer-chip brain, they already gave themselves one. Now all they need is a lifetime supply of Soma.

I teach at a state university. It is not a prestigious school, but I value and enjoy my students. It’s finals week, so part of my morning was fielding emails from people who dropped the ball ten weeks ago, and want another chance. The situations can rip out my heartstrings, but I have to be robotic in my assessment of these situations, and honest, they can always do better next time. 

After that, I Googled “Was Steve Jobs a devil worshipper?” It was a legitimate question after I saw an advertisement including the pricing for his first Apple computer. An hour investigating and I didn’t get an answer, but I stumbled upon a lot of weird people’s theories of the world. 

It was an enjoyable time. I need a night and a morning to make sense of it all.

That Guy In The Whale

I never watched the movie “The Whale,” but I think the moral of the story is don’t replace sex with food, or you will get too fat to fit through your front door and will be trapped forever. In contrast to Repunzal though, who wistfully combs her hair while anticipating her prince’s arrival, the post-virginal and whale-size ensures that no suitor will post up outside your house holding up a boom box.

What’s a gal to do? True Crime shows sprinkled with HIV commercials have the power to turn any sex-positive woman’s attitude into “fine for them,” but harboring a Victorian personal stance.

I avoid the looming threat of enormity by going on a walk with my dog, a psychotic barker. I leave his poo bag on the same curb when I go on the uphill part. On Monday there was a post-it note taped to the bag that said, “Dear Dog Owner, please don’t leave your bag of dog poop on our property.”

I was offended at first, and thought, “What a miserable a-hole, I always pick this bag up on my way home.” So the next day, I left it on the curb in front of the house next door. As I was getting closer to my house I remembered, “Oh my gosh, I forgot the poop.”

I found myself immersed in a vivid montage, recalling countless instances of strolling down the hill, the poo bag in sight. Suddenly, my sister's call interrupted my thoughts, and I picked up the phone, "Biiiiiitch." Lost in her captivating story about a coworker bringing her child's homework packet to work, only to realize it had to be in the child's handwriting, I continued my walk, completely oblivious to the forgotten bag.

Now I carry the poop with me the entire time, and I forgave myself for hating the person who rightfully put the Post-it onto my poop.

I heard Peter Thiel give a brilliant response to a question in an interview. When asked, “What is a mistake you regret in your career.” He simply replied, “I do not dwell on failure, so I will not answer that question.”

I was like, “Yes bitch,” and adopted it into my life. I also learned another lovely trick to get your brain right. I went to the Austin Film Festival at the end of October and heard an amazing screenwriter explain the challenges of negative self-talk, she said when the nagging voice comes into your head that’s trying to slash your confidence, you picture a red chair, and then tell that voice, “I hear you, but you need to take a seat. We're not going to do that right now.”

This works, and then I heard Cheryl Strayed say a very similar thing in an interview within the week. I was like, “How does everyone know this but me?”

As a parent, I’m compelled to impart any seed of wisdom onto my children, so I told Kingsley, and she asked me, “Why is the chair red?” I had no idea.

My parents watched my kids when I went to Austin. They went on independent study, and Geoffrey finished his three days’ worth of work in one hour, but Kingsley told me she would do it on her trip. Well, her report card came out, and she has not been doing her work. I told my dad, and he said, “You need to tell her to stop crying and do her homework!”

My sister told me her daughter received a bad report card. I said, “Throw it in the trash. A first grader doesn’t get a bad report card.” 

It’s a miracle that kids today can make it through the public school system without getting low self-esteem. I didn’t go to a notable elementary, middle, or high school, and I have maybe two memories of doing homework. It was a problem when I went to college and realized you have to do work, but I didn’t have report cards which led me to believe I wouldn’t be able to understand once I started doing it. 

My daughter’s “homework” is a lesson on organizational systems. She has six classes, and usually three homework tasks that are ten to twenty minutes each, some are on the Chrome book and some are on handouts. Could she possibly be solidifying, strengthening, and deepening her knowledge in those ten minutes? No, she is being taught how to use a calendar, and folders and turn meaningless assignments in for credit.

I don’t convey this to her, but I sympathize with her because I understand why she finds it to be such a complete waste of time. 

She is too old for me to throw her report card away, and tell her to keep on reading her books because she will be fine as long as she does that. No, she saw it, and I had to then impart to her the wisdom I learned from Peter Thiel, “Bitch, that report card is in the past, so don’t worry about it.” Then I added my dad’s sentiment, “But stop crying, and do your homework.”

I bought Kiki a sweatshirt on Temu that says “I’m not clumsy, the walls are out to get me” because she tends to walk into the railing, walk off of curbs, or straight into a wall. This happened the other day. She was leaving the kitchen and somehow got the math wrong, and half her body hit the door jam. She hit her forehead and was crying. 

I imparted some of my wisdom. Like the broken refrigerator in my kitchen, warm and empty, I hugged her and pet her hair, as I said, “Kiki, this is all in your brain, just tell yourself it doesn’t hurt.”

Yes, my piece of shit refrigerator is broken again. So we keep all of our groceries in a wine fridge. It works just the same and has the added benefit of making it impossible to shop in such a way that I could get as big as that guy in the movie The Whale, played by Oscar-winner Brendan Fraser.

Cloudbusting

As my car inched down the freeway, I seriously regretted chugging two glasses of water before I left. I had to pee so bad it was making me feel like I could throw up. I had the urge to send a text to the person I talked to every day for the last four years, but I knew I couldn’t because we broke up.

In my twenties, I had my birth chart done. It’s a life horoscope based on the date, time, and location of birth. I hate to break it to anyone born in Los Angeles at 4:30 on June 26, 1982, but relationships' outlook was pretty bleak. I believe it said, to expect to find your love companion in 2040.

It didn’t say I wouldn’t try, I believe it said there would be many attempts. I’m unashamedly like Elizabeth Taylor, but with the sense to not marry every man who goes down on me. Instead, I just feel utterly indebted.

This was a very hard decision, and it’s been a sad time. I look at the past few years with the same perspective as examining a Reversible Image picture. Like you look at it one way, and you see an old lady, and you look at it another way and you see a young girl. I can look back and see such amazing moments, so intimate and funny, but the picture of what led me to this point is not apparent. The absence of that can send immediate distress, but I just have to close one eye and cock my head to the left (metaphorically) and find the other image.

The internal debate was strong at the beginning. I had two lawyers deliberating my decision. Let’s call one Marsha Marsha Marsha Clark and the other one Johnny Cockram. Marsha Marsha Marsha was defending my decision, and Johnny Cockram was poking holes in it every chance he could. 

I was worried I’d isolate and give these lawyers too much time, but I have a bunch of friends, 2 sisters, 2 brothers, 20 cousins, 14 aunts and uncles, and like a million nieces and nephews. There’s always a wedding, baptism, baby shower, retirement party, or some other celebration happening. 

I was talking on the phone to my mom when I was walking the dog, and she told me that for Christmas she is buying everyone this plunger choking device. When she described the product she gave a monologue that sounded word for word like a commercial. She explained how many people die each year from choking and described how an EMT saved a young kid’s life. I told her, “Mom, I think you’ve been brainwashed by your Fox News commercials. Now they’re using their fear tactics to sell you things.”

She told me I was wrong. Anyone who has a loved one who is a Fox News devotee hears this often. After I was home, and tidying up around the house, I thought, “Maybe I should get the choking plunger! I probably should have it here in case I’m choking and alone!”

I was grateful for my mom looking out, and now I can be even more grateful for her tracking me on my phone because if I go missing she’ll be the first to know.

Music can be a band-aid or a nice rubbing of salt in the wound. My playlist is an emotional minefield right now. And I can walk into the store, or be lying in the dentist’s chair and a song will start playing that brings up very vivid memories. It’s important in these moments to remind myself, this is a coincidence, not a sign from the universe.

I was sitting with Kiki in the car and she started singing “Running Up That Hill,” and I was thrown. When I asked her how she knew a Kate Bush song from 1985, she told me, “It’s not old… It’s on Stranger Things.”

I started listening to Kate Bush, and what a glorious band-aid. Babooshka is an elevated Do You Like Piña Coladas song, and Cloudbusting is awesome, can there be a better song? I played Kiki Wuthering Heights and she looked shocked. I told her, “Yes, this is some weird shit, but if you listen to it a few more times, you’ll see it’s pretty brilliant."

I was scared to tell the kids. I thought I could handle it like how I was going to handle our cat disappearing last summer (but she miraculously turned back up after two weeks) and put off this conversation by continuing to tell them he’s traveling when they’re home. My parents came into town to help me take a bunch of stuff to the dump, and when I told them this plan, they told me that it was a terrible idea and that my kids would think it was weird that I had lied to them.

So, I sucked it up and told them. They were sad. They said, “I can’t believe you’re getting divorced again.”

I told them, “It’s technically not a divorce.”

Geoffrey told me he wanted to go running, so we set out on a run, and he asked me questions about it. He asked, “Why didn’t you talk to him?”

I assured him, I didn’t not try. Geoffrey knows I’m a hard worker, but he doesn’t know I do my best learning on the job.

I don’t actually believe in horoscopes. I read them for fun. My monthly horoscope for September said I would get a big sum of money mid-month. It lied. I literally wrote in my journal, “Fuck my horoscope.”

I’ll still read my November horoscope because it’s nice to feel like something good is going to happen, and even if it doesn't happen in November, 2040 is on the distant horizon.

Too much Temu

With Kiki getting braces last week, and then getting a cell phone for her birthday this week, Geoffrey has had it up to here with his sister being the toast of the town. If he slams his bedroom door shut one more time, I think I might have a heart attack. 

His brain is short-circuiting, and as a co-parent, I have the privilege of blaming this on the other household. I hypothesize he’s not getting enough sleep because when he gets here, he has deep lines under his eyes just like a sleepy character in a comic strip. His exhaustion, and erratic mood, corrects itself over the time he’s with me since we’re going to bed at eight, but that first day or two can be rough.

This week it happens every time his sister says something that includes “my new phone,” which is often, but last week it had to do with Temu. Temu, the new sensation of our house, started out as great fun. We found the best deals, and I’m convinced they sell some of the same beauty products you find at Ulta/Sephora because Kiki found Lip Oil on Temu for $3, and we went to Ultra and it was the exact same bottle, label and all, on the $40 Dior Lip Oil.

Geoffrey started browsing on Temu, and his adrenaline spiked. The countdown timer and the deals were giving him the same feeling James Holzhauer gets when he steps on a casino floor. What made him addicted to the app was when it said, if you ask someone to join, you will get $100 in free merchandise. He picked out a robot vacuum, Switch controllers, and more after he sent requests out from my phone. He then had the 24-hour countdown on his mind and needed to check the app incessantly and call my family to see that they joined after he texted them the link.

A shady thing happened, after each person he asked signed up, there were three, he was always a few points shy of getting his free stuff. It’s a mean marketing tactic, where G was left chasing the dragon. He’s a kid, and can’t accept when an ad says they’re going to give you a bunch of free stuff, it is most likely bullshit.

He took this poorly, and instead of saying, “I’m really frustrated because my hopes were high I was getting a treasure trove, and I can’t believe anything Temu says,” he decided he’d slam his bedroom door, and throw things.

This is Uber-disturbing because he’s not processing his thoughts in a productive way, and he is taking any uncomfortable emotion, and assigning it straight to rage. I’ll keep talking to him about this, but until this gets straightened out with maturity and discussion, I will just blame it on the lack of sleep he gets at his dad’s house.

I love how Geoffrey gets so invested. He’s a big dreamer and goes all in. I know how he’ll recover from the trauma of his sister getting a cell phone, he’ll convince himself an even better phone is coming to him very soon. It started last night when we went to bed, he asked, “Mom, are you sure Santa is real?” 

Then he told me about a book Bridge to Terabithia, and how he was skeptical, but if Santa is real, he’s bringing him an iPhone 15 for Christmas.

I’m a big dreamer like Geoffrey, and it can lead me into some questionable places, where if I don’t keep my head on, I can float away into a fairytale based on modern mysticism.

In January, I was binging Jack Canfield's content and reading Think and Grow Rich, so I started a mastermind group with my cousin. In our last meeting, we pointed out how much we’ve accomplished this year. Then she told me about the new car she bought after starting her new job, and said, “Alicia, it has 18 cupholders! I feel like I’m driving a small rocket ship.”

Life coaches, like Canfield, hold seminars that vary in intensity from hand-holding hippie sound baths, to sequestered in a hotel conference room for three days with little sleep and hydration. My older sister attended the latter and is the only person I know who found a self-help retreat to be torturous and complete bullshit. She felt duped, just as Geoffrey had been by Temu.

My sister went with my little brother, and they were separated upon arrival. At one point the group had to give speeches about what they would do if they had ten million dollars. My sister infuriated the life coach by simply stating in her speech, “If I won ten million dollars, I wouldn’t tell anyone.” 

She sat down, and the coach pressed her, saying “Not telling anyone isn’t an option, give another speech about what you would do with ten million dollars.” 

She doubled down, “All these people will be broke in a few years, and I’m still going to be rich because I didn’t go blabbing my mouth about it.”

She knew the tactics used by the life coach were cultish. He had everyone disclose their darkest secrets, this was mostly childhood trauma, and when it came to her turn to share, she felt like a kid in a confession booth, and just made something up about being mean to one of her siblings. I was horrified but laughing when she said, “I shit you not, at one point they had us stand in a circle and wanted everyone to kiss. It was disgusting.”

After a final messy argument, the weekend ended with my sister and her life coach being enemies for life.

My sister is sensible. She’s not going to let false impersonations of rolling around in money like you’ve just fucked Woody Harrelson for a one-time fee keep her from staying grounded.

I remember when I had the audiobook playing Think and Grow Rich, and Geoffrey came in. He heard the promise of money and was hooked. He grabbed a notepad and started taking notes. I stopped whatever it was I was doing, and thought, that’s a great idea. I should be taking notes too.

Cinnamon Roll Awakening

 

At the beginning of summer, I took the kids to a megachurch in the neighborhood, just for fun. I was curious about these places that treat church like a big rock concert. The pastor started his sermon with a question. He asked, “Does anyone feel like they’re becoming more introverted with age?”

My twelve-year-old daughter raised her hand. It was the only connection we had with the service. Even the barbecue afterward was lackluster, in desperate need of Lawry's seasoning salt.

Kiki might feel like an introvert at school, but she’s very much an extrovert around her family. She walks around singing songs she makes up. She sang me a song, and I didn’t catch on she was making fun of me till she hit the chorus. Titled “Mom’s not Miss America” the song started with She has pimples on her chin, coffee stained teeth, and wears chunky glasses then moved into Mom’s not Miss America, and one complimentary line about me being nice. It was as offensive as that “Happy for the rest of our life/Make an ugly woman your wife” song.

I generally think all her songs are funny. The other day, she was singing, “Satan is your boyfriend.” And I thought, how clever, she’s just like Taylor Swift, not worried about saying negative things and calling someone out for being rude, and here she’s likened an asshole to having satan as their boyfriend. I told her as much, and she said, “It’s actually Satan is my boyfriend.” 

I told her I didn’t like the song anymore, and she laughed and walked away.

I get a lot of spiritual fulfillment from yoga. The lady whose class I attend, Dina, is a certifiable whack-a-doo, like when she shouts to the class, “You’re so sensual,” as we move our pelvis up and down into bridge pose, but she’s incredibly good at her job, which ultimately is to make you feel good about yourself. 

She reminded us about Scream Therapy, which I hadn’t practiced since I was in my last year of college, and my little sister and I were spending a weekend together and felt the weight of a lot of stress so we’d count down from three and scream at the top of our lungs while we were driving around in the car.

I tried it with the kids. Kiki seemed to like it, but Geoffrey refused to do it, and he looked at me like I was a certifiable whack-a-doo. Geoffrey is not as much of a hippie as the rest of us.

I was at the library and saw the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull, so I checked it out, thinking, “Great, now I can see what all the rage was about.” 

As I closed the cover after reading the final page of the book, I gave the look that Geoffrey gave me after scream therapy, and thought, “No wonder hippies get trapped by cults so easily.” 

Kiki, the introvert at school and extrovert at home, asked, “When will you tell me what sex is?”

I said, “I’m still figuring out what to say, but I’ll do it soon.” 

When I was in sixth grade I watched a cartoon about sex and reproduction. I didn’t watch it at school, I watched it at home because, believe it or not, my mom was a sex-ed teacher. She must have just pushed her lesson plan into our household because we didn’t get a sit-down discussion on the birds and the bees, we got a VHS.

My school sex education started in seventh grade. My teacher started the lesson by propping open the door and making us scream, “Penis, Penis, Penis. Vagina, Vagina, Vagina.” 

All I remember beyond that was a woman with AIDs came to talk to the class. The only reason I remember that is because my mom talked to the principal afterward. I came home and asked my mom what the lady meant when she said her boyfriend and her were “eating leftovers” when they had sex because they use saran wrap. This probably made my teacher hate me, even though I didn’t do it to get her in trouble, I only did it because I felt like I was the only person not in on the big joke. Anyway, my mom’s not going to let someone’s terminal illness (at the time) be an excuse for having inappropriate jokes when headlining the seventh-grade classroom sex-ed show.

The next phase of sex education came freshman year of high school. This one was much more effective, for me at least, because I had a better idea of the mechanics of it all. The teacher followed up her definition of sex with a slide show of herpes-infected vaginas and penises. My mom had no complaints.

Our last weekend of summer we went to Tahoe. I had been craving a cinnamon roll since May and finally decided I was going to make this moment happen.  On the drive to the bakery, I called my mom. She yelled at me, “I have a roll of cinnamon rolls in the fridge. They expired last month, and someone needs to eat them.”

I said, “No Mom. I’m craving a delicious bakery cinnamon roll, not your garbage.” 

She made me feel like an elitist snob, and then said, “Becky’s kids have no problem eating my expired food.”

When Kiki and I lined up at the bakery, there was one cinnamon roll left in the display case, and I made a major strategic error by loudly saying, “I’ve got to get that cinnamon roll. It looks amazing,” and then realized there were four customers lined up ahead of us. As each customer ordered, I’d hope with all my might that they wouldn’t order that last cinnamon roll, my cinnamon roll. 

The man in front of me ordered it. He knew more than any of the others how much I wanted it. I didn’t get mad, I had already waited three months for a cinnamon roll, what’s one more day, week, or month going to do? As we were leaving, and I saw him sitting at his table with the cinnamon roll still in its container with no indication he was going to scarf it down, I knew in my heart, that he didn’t even really want the cinnamon roll.

Geoffrey and I went on a hike that weekend. A second attempt at this mountain. Last year’s attempt was disastrous; sworn to secrecy about the details, I will just say it involved my not bringing toilet paper on what would have been a seven-hour hike. This time I brought the toilet paper, but we didn’t need it. 

We made it to the top of the mountain. Our spiritual moment didn’t happen on the summit because the wind was blowing 100 miles per hour, and Geoffrey worried he would blow right off the steep mountaintop. It didn’t happen when we peed behind a giant rock off the hiking path, and I looked up and saw a group of people tromping up. The first rule of peeing in public is, “If you can see them, then they can see you.” I wasn’t about to pull up my pants midstream, but I had to believe, in my heart, these people would look away once it dawned on them I was not flashing my Vagina, Vagina, Vagina for shits and giggles, but because I was taking care of business.

The spiritual moment happened on the last hour of the hike. We were so proud to have completed this goal we set two years earlier and had a fun chat as the terrain became much less treacherous. I said to him, “Your sister’s birthday’s coming up, and I’m ordering her this lotion she wants, so you can give it to her as a gift.”

He said, in total earnestness, “Oh, I already know what I’m getting her… I’m buying her some pampers.”

I laughed so hard, the earth shook, and then the sky opened up, and God floated down on a cloud, and kissed us on the head.

Not really, but it kind of felt like that. I’m expecting a similar experience when I finally get to eat a cinnamon roll.

Tokyo Travels

 

The kids and I went to Tokyo for a week at the end of July. It was a whirlwind, and when people ask me, “What did you guys do?” I find a hard time summing it all up in a few sentences. We did what we usually do, we ate food and walked around. We mostly ate at 7-Eleven, and we thought we were masters of the microwaves, coffee dispensers, and really state-of-the-art smoothie makers until Geoffrey put his smoothie cup in without taking the lid off, and broke the machine. Luckily there’s a 7-Eleven on every corner, so we just avoided that one for the rest of our trip.

I told my friend about the 7-Eleven, and she asked, “I wonder why we don’t have these smoothie machines in our 7-Elevens?” And I confidently replied, “Because someone here would use it as a urinal.”

My favorite day was our first full day in the city because we went on a guided tour in a bus, so there was not any logistical thinking, just get on and off, and be satisfied with the 15 tourist hotspots we hit because it would have taken us two weeks to get through those destinations by using the subway.

On the last day, I had to Zoom into a class I’m taking, and then we packed up and got on a shuttle bus to the airport. As we drove away, I realized we were right next to Shinjuku Train station, and had we just walked one block further on one of our nights wondering around we would have come across a really cool neighborhood that I walked through when I was in Tokyo exactly six years earlier. My Eat, Love, Pray trip I crammed into a week after I got divorced.

I’ve taken the kids on epic plane rides before and know that I have to be on high alert, there’s never a moment to close my eyes because their exhaustion makes them unpredictable. Everything can be fine one moment, and then a Coke will get spilled in their lap, Geoffrey will tell Kingsley she has a penis, and Kingsley will scream at the top of her lungs, “I DO NOT HAVE A PENIS.” Or something like that.

I pulled my book out but just watched movies on the seat-back TV. I watched a documentary narrated by Kate Winslet called Eating Ourselves to Extinction that had me convinced I would go vegetarian but have not really implemented it yet. Then I watched the movie Catherine Called Birdy which was so great. Made by Lena Dunham, a brilliant artist who doesn’t get a fair shake by mainstream media, she placed a medieval story in a cute bubble with a sheen of modern style. 

My brother is a staunch Catholic and sends text messages on the family chain relevant to the saints of that day. Many of them are young girls who decided they were called to become nuns at 12 or 13 years old. After watching the movie it makes perfect sense. The alternative to becoming a nun would be to be “sold” to an old man who would repeatedly rape you, then you’d continue to have babies until you die in childbirth. No wonder these young ladies were so receptive to God’s calling.

When we landed in San Francisco, I was eager to get home, but after being up for twenty hours, I felt severely under-caffeinated. During the last 15 minutes of the drive, I was grateful to veer onto the grated ground that gives your butthole the tickles because it jolted me back to reality, and I would say, “Just fifteen more minutes, focus and you will be able to take a nice ten-hour nap.”

I know, the nap is the main component in the recipe for jet lag, but I was spent. It took us a week to get back on track. We had a major setback two days after we got home when Geoffrey’s best friend spent the night, and their main objective for sleepovers is to stay awake all night long. I had another class that night and hid in my room on Zoom while they shot Nerf rifles around the house, but at one point someone came in and said, the toilets overflowing.

My Zoom face of interest was maintained while I nodded as the teacher gave me notes on my work, all the while imagining a flood of shit moving through our house like in Triangle of Sadness. Luckily the water didn’t keep flowing, and I was able to clean up the mess after my turn was up, and I could turn my camera off for a couple of minutes.

At three in the morning, I had to confiscate all their devices and tell them they needed to just lay on the couch, and they could have the TV on, but I know they still had an iPad in their grips. I wonder if I were a big man/dad, would they pass all their shit over, and go to bed after I asked them too? Child energy is crazy, and I wish I could stay up late and be full of life, but I also know the brain needs sleep, and staying up all night means you are just fewer hours away from giving yourself a psychotic break.

The kids had a few more days before they went back to school, so we went to the movies for a double feature. We watched Barbie and then Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Kingsley was so excited to watch Barbie, she dressed in all pink, right down to my 13-year-old pink Converse high tops. After the movie, when we sat in the reclines for TMNT, I asked Kiki, “Do you know what a gynecologist is?” And she said no, so I told her, and her face lit up, clued in on the joke she laughed.

That night I was putting the kids to bed, and Geoffrey who loves to tease me to no end, said, “Hey mom! Guess what?” I said, “What?” And he replied, “I love patriarchy.” So I hit him over the head with a pillow, which is how he wanted me to react because he laughed hysterically. I had to remind him, it wasn’t very long ago when women were treated very poorly in this world. It’s not set right still, but we live in a much better time. Thank you birth control.

Marriage itself is one of those things that I won’t fully comprehend, but there are very lucky people out there whom it works for. My parents, it works for them wonderfully. I just don’t think it’s right for me. Madonna sums it up nicely. That’s Madonna the singer/dancer sensation, not Madonna Mother Mary sensation. She says, “I think that everyone should get married at least once, so you can see what a silly, outdated institution it is.”

After I saw Barbie, of course, I thought about a lot of things, that’s what a good movie does. I wonder if there was some primitive agreement made by women to take on this submissive role and absorb the dominance that men need to inflict in order to attain whatever brain chemical is released from feeling powerful, as a way to protect children. I worry that the rise of women puts children at risk, and when I read about child porn, men shooting up kids’ schools, and human trafficking, it makes me so sick. But what’s the solution, women resort to giving up all power so men don’t create this workaround to then feed this need to dominate on children. I don’t know though, it’s probably just a dark thought and maybe there’s not much to it. I hope so.

A couple of people were really impressed I took the kids to Tokyo, and I guess it does demonstrate a good sense of adaptability. I think I’m at a loss for words to sum up our week in the largest metropolitan area in the world because we barely scratched the surface. I hope we go back in six years. Then Kingsley will be getting ready for college instead of middle school and Geoffrey will be bigger than both of us. We can finally make it to the anime studio, watch sumo wrestlers, and find the world's best egg-salad sandwich because as we drove away from the city to the airport, I felt sort of sad like there was so much I didn’t discover, so much I wanted to know.