Pink With a Side of Lightsaber, Please.

Having a four year-old daughter is seriously skewing my view of normalcy. Yes, she does all the stereotypical girly-girl stuff. Pink is a passion, not a color at our house. Dance class is a must. Princesses are prime. But then....well, then there are the things you just never saw coming.

Juxtaposed next to a world of sparkly lip gloss, skirts that "twirl", and layers upon layers of pink are these other strange obsessions.

First, Star Wars. All things Star Wars, even before she even knew about the movies. She has taken possession of my old action figures. Every car ride becomes a space journey for Leia and Wicket to the planet of Tatooine. When told we were taking her to Disney, that mecca of princess, her first reaction was, "Maybe we will see an Ewok!" She has also inherited all her dad's old GI Joe, complete with GI Joe camping gear. How Strawberry Shortcake loves good ride on the emergency raft! Great news, Princess Jasmine's hand can hold a small plastic blaster!

A truly sublime moment in her young life occurred several weekends ago. Her preschool ballet class was asked to perform their dance "Me and My Teddy Bear" at a local school carnival. As she stood off stage, waiting her turn to dance, dressed in a positive froth of pink she saw a truly amazing sight. "Look Dad," her little voice piped, clear as a bell, "It's a wookie." And indeed it was. Someone dressed as Chewbacca was striding across the fairgrounds as a stageful of baton twirlers attempted to hold the crowd's attention. Other small children cringed in fear, my kid begged for a chance to meet the wookie. Small town life often makes for odd pairings, but a cast of Star Wars characters at a carnival dance recital must be up there on any list. My favorite picture of the day does not involve a tutu or a teddy, but the beaming face of my child as she poses with a Jawa.

Secondly, for a child who enjoys going to tea and begs to wear twirly skirts she has a definite interest in the less than dainty aspects of life. Favorite topics of conversation include the way matter decays and why so many things smell bad. She loves to discuss the digestive process, and I do mean all of it. A deer got trapped in the fenced-in drainage area of her sitter's neighborhood and met it's sad end there during the winter. She is fascinated by watching the changes..."Today I could see the whole ribcage!" Our dog walking route takes on a whole new allure when there is roadkill along the way.

Thirdly, dinosaurs. She knows the names of things I can barely stumble through. She will patiently explain to me (and anyone else who will listen) the differences between the Allosaurus, the Brachiosaurus, and the Brontosaurus. In case you are curious, it is all in the color and size of the crest on their heads. She is very interested in what they eat and in their dung. She wants to know about their eggs, their eating habits, and how their fingernails get trimmed. And, ever since she heard there is no way to know what color their skin was, she holds out eternal hope that Velociraptors were actually pink.

And while I never see them coming, these things delight me. I hope in her to always see these surprises because the very best things in life are all about the unexpected pairings. The cool sweet melon with the salty prisciutto, the funny moment in the midst of tears, and the storm trooper at the dance recital.

Mad at the King

Before you become alarmed...relax, I am not mad at Elvis. (Breathe sigh of relief here.) But, I am mad at Stephen King. (Regret previous sigh of relief now.) That is almost (but not quite) hard for me to say. I love Stephen King. As a writer, he does something I long to do. He is a storyteller that people want to listen to. He crafts characters that keep you reading page after page (after page after page). I have, in the past, defended him vehemently (not that he needed my help) against those that say he is "just a horror writer", a hack.

It goes without saying (yet I persist) that being a "successful" writer depends on your definition of success. Are you an artist? Or are you a storyteller? I am sure many a writer aspires to both in equal measure, but I think most would be happy to qualify as one. As a storyteller, I have to believe the measure of success is in the desire of the audience to keep reading/listening. In that sense, it is hard to argue that Stephen King is anything but a success. Book after book, year after year, people keep reading.

I hate horror, but I love Stephen King because I think he rarely loses sight of the fact that the story is all about the people. I especially adore his novellas, "Different Seasons" would come with me to a desert island, should I be given the choice. "On Writing" gets at least a yearly reading, I can see in that book that being a storyteller comes in being able to see the potential in the collision of the everyday life and a fantastic imagination.

But then he had to go and rag on Stephenie Meyer. I read the Twilight books. I was entertained by them. I had my teenage girl moment and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Why? Because the story is intriguing and it captivates the imagination. Did she achieve the goal that I suspect she had for the books. Absolutely, she told a story that people wanted to hear and they loved her for it. Is it the most elegant prose? No. Do the vast majority of her readers care? No. It is the force of the characters and their impossible conflicts that drive the story forward. And, in this case, that is enough.

I think maybe Stephen King has lost sight of what he is. He may be insanely well paid, but he is still a storyteller and he should have some respect for others trying to do that job. If Meyer was truly a sucky storyteller we would never have heard of her.

So I am left to ponder...Is this case of sour grapes? Was the encouragement he wrote to aspiring writers in "On Writing" just a bunch of b.s.? Does he feel he is far superior to other "popular" writers? Is it because the book is mainly geared toward a young to middle-age female audience (one that many an adult male seems to scorn and deem less important)? Clearly this has me fretting. King made this comment 16 days ago and yet it is what I find myself thinking about while running my slow and plodding miles on the treadmill.

If his point was that he is a better writer than Meyer, then it is hardly one he has to make. It's not just the all mighty dollar, his books (at least large parts of some of them) are well written. There are parts of the Twilight series that will make you cringe (and yet you read on). But think about all of the pages upon pages of writing King has on Meyer. My friend, Sally, likes to remind her writing students that writing is, at least at first, an exercise in abundance. You have to write and write and write and let out the good and the bad. Then you take a look at what you have, strive to create more like the good and revise the bad to make it more closely resemble the good. So in the numbers game of writing, he has years and thousands of pages on her.

I want my hero back.

Should I ever be so lucky, I resolve to keep my big mouth shut about other authors. Except, of course, this time.

Wordy Indeed

I'm reading "The Wordy Shipmates". I confess to being a goodreads.com stalker. Lately, I have been allowing this to guide my reading selections with mixed results. I find people I know that I suspect are smart and well-read and I sample the things they like. I think on some level we all have a private criteria for making snap judgements about people. For some it is clothes, or profession, or eating habits, weight, etc. For me, I am beginning to think it is reading habits and preferences. So, in this covert judgemental manner,I stumbled across "Assassination Vacation". Liked it, so onto "The Wordy Shipmates".

Just finished teaching the Separatists and Puritans to my reluctant 5th graders, so it is all fresh in my mind. Wordy indeed. My time in the most likely now-defunct UVA TLC left me with a knee jerk instinct to use primary sources when teaching social studies and the wordiness puts me in a bit of a bind. On one hand, the Puritans loved the words and were pretty impressed with their own endeavor so they wrote EVERYTHING down. Really, everything. So great, right? Lots of primary sources! Except, the Puritans loved words, layered upon words, wrapped in words, nestled next to other words, and playing footsie with still other words. The bigger the word, the better. Seriously, most of their thoughts are indecipherable to the average 5th grade mind. So, five words in and the kids are drowning in a thick and murky stew of words. My students think in text message format, so the Puritanical ramblings require lots of translation. Most give up in despair before the first paragraph wends its way to the next.

So maybe my complaint is not with the Puritans, but with the startling contrast in approach to the language between our country's founders and it's current inhabitants. But that's an issue for another time.

Don't get me wrong. I love words. I remember with great clarity having very strong feelings about words from the get-go. The word "hypothetical" was an ecstatic experience...the word itself popped in my mouth like the explosion of tapioca beads. The meaning is delicious ..."supposing for the sake of argument". On the flip side, the word "moist" makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up and almost instantly activates my gag reflex. Ugh.

So, my point being...I can hardly blame the Puritans for their love affair with the linguistic side of life. Still, when that obsession makes your meaning obscure, has it gone too far? Is it too much to ask for words to bridge a gap of over 250 years? Still, as the Puritans were founding their "city on the hill" they had to believe their words would live in infamy, so convinced were they of their own righteousness and superiority, they would delight to think school children would study their words all these years past...did they think they were being clear? Were they eager to prove how enlightened they were? Did they think their words revealed them as being closer to God?

As with so many things, a word is not just a word, it is revealing about the writer or chooser of the word. And so, a life of wading through the "almost right word" to find the "precisely right word". So to craft a lovely sentence, that satisfies like the hum of the sweet spot on a wooden bat, is the point (for me). But what if my sweet spot is your wordy shipmate? Drat...foiled again!