This afternoon I stole away (with a friend, lovely and talented Amy—read her blog, see her first-ever trailer for her forthcoming picture book) to see Midnight in Paris.
In case you were keeping track of my summer wish list, this clocked in at number 18.
You probably weren’t.
I wasn’t, by number, but I was in this sense: I feel determined—despite not exactly figuring out time or energy for all this—to do some leisurely “stuff” just because I might enjoy doing so. I do know how pathetic that sentence sounds (like, really, can’t she let herself go to the movies?). The movie had to end in time to pick up the young, slightly sunburned tennis player at camp, though.
To be clear: the most important (to me) goals-slash-dreams on my wish list have nothing to do with movies or berry picking (although I’m totally about to go blueberry picking), my top priorities are to get some sleep and make the house less cluttered and chaotic.
Ah, but the movie… I loved its fantasy and I loved the notion that anyone who looks like Owen Wilson could be even a fiftieth as neurotic as Mr. Allen himself (or really, any small, East Coast-y, wound up Jewish man—and I do know a few). I mulled this over while driving to get the kid at camp. I decided that Owen Wilson channeling a Mr. Allenesque character could come across as one fiftieth as neurotic as one played by Mr. Allen, perhaps, but that in real life, I’d be kind of hard pressed to believe someone who looks like Owen Wilson could be nearly so knotted up in those ways as Mr. Allen.
I am told that the next Paintbox Theatre offering—The Emperor’s New Clothes—delves into how different looks causes people to respond differently.
Even if what I just wrote about Owen Wilson makes no sense, know that I adored him channeling a Mr. Allenesque character.
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This week one friend’s daughter is attending an engineering camp. She’s the only girl. Another friend’s son is attending a Lego-slash-engineering camp. No girls there. This year’s session of the rocket camp Remy attended—with his friend now doing engineering—has just two girls.
There are more boys than girls at the sports camp where Remy is this week, but not by so terribly many that you look around and wonder why girls don’t do sports, because clearly, girls are doing sports (phew).
Every day I take Saskia to Sunnyside we seem to cross paths with high school age (young) women studying science and engineering at Smith this month. Even my moments listening to idle chatter while walking make me glad that there’s a place where (young) women are taken seriously for these interests, even though I wonder how: clearly, they are not all going to rocket or Lego or very young engineering camps.
As my pal Avi writes about in regards to two books—The Girls’ Summer Book and, surprise, The Boys’ Summer Book—it’s infuriating how often we change kids will be kids to boys will be boys or girls will be girls.
I am in Avi’s camp: pissed off when we shrug and say boys just are one way and girls another. How can we know when we doll up girls and toughen boys and literally segregate toys by gender? (That said we have now in our barn two bikes the same size, one black with orange flames and the other purple; when she is big enough for said bikes, I am pretty certain I know which one Saskia will pick and it won’t be her brother’s hand-me-down, it’ll be Lila and Stella’s hand-me-down).
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You might wonder how I’m going to get from Woody Allen to gender and summer activities and back. During my senior year in high school, I was very much pissed at my (male) English teacher for a syllabus that included just one female writer (half the class, female, FYI) and that one female writer was Flannery O’Connor. I’d deem her a great writer, but not the one I’d pick if I were to have one lone female writer (don’t ask me who I’d pick; I don’t know).
Anyway. I did two things that year when writing papers for him: one, I always wrote about the female characters and two, I always made some analogy back to a Woody Allen film (because I lurved his films). The latter, I did for my own amusement.
Yes, I was oh-so-desperate to go to college I couldn’t take such things as going for the best grade on my English papers seriously enough.
But there you have it.
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Before the movie, we went to Goberry (also on my list not that it needs to be because I’d go anyway). No surprise, I like my summer wish list quite a lot.
