so heres a thing my mother always said to me growing up when i broke something on accident that i think is really important
and i know, from watching my friends and seeing their panic and terror when something broke, that not only were not nearly enough children told this thing, many children were punished in place of being reassured
and thats heartbreaking
so heres the words from my mom that i was always told, and theyre the same words that anyone who never got to hear them should hear now, courtesy of my mom, who has repeated those same words to many a friend of mine and now to you
if i ever broke anything, the first words out of her mouth would always be and have always been, “are you hurt?”
i would say no
she would say, “thats okay, then”
and i would ask why
and she would say “because it was just a thing- even if its a nice thing, or an old thing, or an expensive thing, its still just a thing. it can be replaced, or we can live without it. there is only one you. there will only ever be one you. you will always be more important than just some thing.”
I lend out a collection to fossils to my school’s 8th grade science teachers annually. I’ve collected since I was a kid, added more as an adult from yard sales and donations. I want kids to be inspired and intrigued. About my 5th year at my school, the teacher came to me with one of her students. The girl looked upset and sort of scared. The teacher explained that the girl’s hand had slipped and a Megaladon Shark’s tooth had broken into two pieces. My first response was to make sure she hadn’t been cut by one of the pieces, and she shook her head, tears in her eyes. I smiled at her and pointed out that she hadn’t dropped it on purpose, that the ridiculously big tooth had been fossilized and survived this long, and it would still be amazing if I had to either keep it in two pieces or superglue it.
It bothered me a lot that the kid was clearly primed by a lot of adults to deal with anger and blame when a simple mistake was made. I offered her a hug, which she accepted and finally laughed.
Story time:
My grandmother owns crystal bowls that have been passed down to her from her grandmother. Being a family with Jewish heritage in Austria, every single piece of family history we own is basically a treasure in itself.
I was already an adult when she allowed me to take one of them home with me, of course only after I swore several oaths to keep it safe. I can go months and years without breaking a single dish, but lo and behold, it takes two weeks and a split second of not paying attention, and suddenly that crystal bowl, that’s worth more to my grandmother than the entire rest of her furniture, goes flying and shatters into a million pieces. I swear I watched for what felt like an hour as that thing dropped, turned around itself and finally crashed in a spectacular impact. Anyway, it’s completely beyond repair, and I’m freaking out because my grandmother will murder me. Only, she will not, because even worse, she’s going to be fucking heartbroken and so, so disappointed with me she won’t even find it within herself to murder me.
But, you gotta do what you gotta do - not being able to face her while confessing, I call her, in tears, apologizing a hundred times before she finally goes: “Gigi, calm down now, what happened??” “*sobbing* I- I broke your grandma’s bohooohooowl -”
And my grandmother, bless that woman, starts laughing hysterically. She’s laughing so much I think, I must have broken her, that’s it, she’s lost her marbles now and it’s my fault, until she wheezes out: “Gigi that bowl survived two world wars and the Nazis but not a month in your kitchen!” and of course I fucking lost it too at that point. That’s how I learned, that in the end, it’s really all about perspective.
Now I’m a step-mum myself and my go to reaction whenever I hear something break is to shrug and say ‘Well, it had a good run’ and then I go fetch a broom and we’ll clean up because if my grandma could laugh off a 100 year old crystal dish, I can laugh off an IKEA mug lmao
I saw Cats last night and I still haven’t recovered. Here is a play-by-play of my experience
The movie begins. The audience is rife with anticipatory giggles. Some lady in the back row loudly says “can we be quiet now, please? let us watch the movie in silence” in a displeased Russian accent.
We will inevitably disappoint her
In the first 5 minutes, while crying with laughter, I decide this movie is actually about a human who gets genetically engineered into a cat and is exiled to a furrykin community.
5 minutes after that, I think about how good a movie this would be if it was hand-drawn animation and not CGI people-cats, and I become absolutely furious
Mice and cockroaches have human faces and bodies. The audience is screaming.
This film comes VERY close to having a dog on screen. I start sweating in dread of what it might look like. The dog is never shown.
None of the humor is funny
During the slow parts I start to imagine other celebrities in full cat CGI to amuse myself
Cat Idris Elba sexily Thanos-snaps another cat out of existence. Audible confusion ripples through the audience.
The cats do some extremely horny body work involving their tails. The audience is making disgusted noises. Several people yelp “oh NO” very loudly
At the end of a song, the throng of cats start “applauding” by slapping their hands on the ground and saying “meowmeowmeowmeowmeow”. This instigates a fight-or-flight response in me so strong that I nearly bolt out of the theatre.
During an awkward silence the camera cuts to a cat making a “yikes” kind of grimace and the whole theatre laughs because that is the exact emotion we are all feeling
A cat helicopters into the ceiling and is vaporized by cat Idris Elba. A man in the audience yells “GOTTEM!!” at the top of his lungs
Most cats are naked but somehow cat Idris Elba manages to be far more naked than all of them. The audience is screaming, again
Memoriiiiiiies. All alone in the moonliiiiiiight. “Please,” begs the Russian lady in the back of the theatre, sounding defeated, “don’t laugh. Not now.”
The actor who plays the main character gray cat who never gets a song explaining who he is (I am told he is Munkustrap) is DEAD SERIOUS about this role. He is a PROFESSIONAL. He is feeling being a cat so hard. Look at his face at literally any point (but especially during the final epilogue song) and I guarantee he will be having an intensely invested serious face journey. His shoulders must be aching from carrying this entire film.
110 minutes later, or maybe years: the credits roll. The audience cheers raucously. We exit the theatre in a daze. One of my friends goes home with a high fever. 10/10
