Letters to the Editor
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I love you Anne
I hope all of you who are so judgemental and so critical will someday have my old job, which was running a group home for teenage boys. Live with a few teenagers for awhile before you cast that stone. My son is sixteen, an honors student, an athlete, a volunteer. He offered to stay home from a party Saturday night to babysit his two younger brothers so his dad and I could have dinner with friends. Coaches and teachers love him. He's NICE. And yet, sometimes I see him look at me with complete contempt. Sometimes there is a tone. Sometimes I have to tell him six million times to mow the lawn, and he never, ever mows the lawn and uses the trimmer on the same day unless he's threatened with dismemberment. His work ethic motivates him to empty the dishwasher, but he sometimes doesn't notice that the dishes are still dirty. He puts away dirty dishes. I have friends raising teenagers and they're in two parent families with lots of consistency and they have work ethic and blah blah blah and they're still self absorbed jerks sometimes--which is part of being a teenager. Have any of you raised a teenager? Ever been one?
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No Name Given...How Brave of You
Hysterical much?
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I Remember Moma
My mother never slapped any of us in the face, never. She made a big point about that when we were all kids. She did however beat the crap out of my sister and I once for breaking a lamp that had belonged to her mother after she told us over and over to get out of the house because in our fighting and frolicing we were going to break something. We were 12 and 14. My father, from time to time, also disciplined us physically. My parents were not the spare-the-rod type. However, my father never whipped us quite as harshly, quite as uncontrollably as my mother did when we broke that lamp. She brought blood with an apple branch. I didn't like her very much for a long time after that but I came to forgive her for it years later. My father had died after a long illness about a year before, leaving my mother with five children at home. Considering the real life pressures she was under, no narcissim here, along with the grief and pain she must have been in, it's a wonder she didn't kill us. But she never, ever slapped any of us in the face. That's just beyond the pale.
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All of you SHUT UP! Annie ROCKS!
I am a mother of four sons, a year and a half from 60, and grandmother to two boys. My life has been testosterone hell (did I mention three brothers and no sisters?), and Anne Lamott helps me through it every single time.
Her work has made me laugh until I cry ("octopus head" made coffee come out of my nose). I should get a kick-back for the number of copies of "Operating Instructions" I've purchased. It is part of every new-baby gift I give. Thirty years after the fact, Anne let me know that all those "nonmaternal" feelings I had in those years were not unique -- in fact, they may even have been the norm.
Sam was born knowing that he would be written about. That's how she deals with life. Beats the shit out of booze and pills. Get off her back. It's the mothers who can't talk about it in any form who do the most damage. He's not a moronic teenager because his mother writes about him. He's a moronic teenager because he's 17, and that's his job.
Never stop writing your life, Annie. Some of us are able to live ours because you so freely share yours.
A fan from Grand Rapids
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Caveat Lector....
Elaine: If you find Lamott's slapping of her son understandable, then you do condone violence. That's nothing to apologize for; I do, too, when it's warranted. Personally, I think what rankles many of the posters (not me) who make an issue of the slap is a) the slap looks like major dissonance when the writer makes it a point of letting the world know she loves Jesus and b)it makes liberals look like ethical parsers. The real mitigation here is Lamott's sex, her liberal outlook (which I agree with) and her status as a single mom. Face it: if Christopher Hitchens admitted he slapped his daughter, no one on this thread would offer that "Ever raise a teenager?" defense.
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Hey ZOom...
You fail to live up to your own standards. You write:
"Ms. Lamott is so eager to unburden her ham-fisted emotions that she has reduced the importance skilled writing."
Shouldn't that be *of* skilled writing? LOL.
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Zoom again
And what is "oured shared language?" I can't find the Berlitz tapes for that one! Must be spoken by a small tribe in Mindanao!
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Well, I assume Ms.Lamott has better proofreaders
Look, I am drawn to any discussion of grammar relunctantly. Mostly because I don't think my writing could bear close examination. I wish this board permitted contributors the chance to edit/correct posts. Please forgive me. I am a fraud.
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My MS makes typing a struggle
I have my good days and I have my bad days
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My MS makes typing a struggle
I have my good days and I have my bad days.
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I could care less
I see this construction as even more of a put down. It's like in Casablanca, when Peter Lorre asks, "You despise me, don't you, Rick?" And Bogart replies something along the lines of, "If I ever thought about it, I would, yes."
I COULD care less -- if I bothered to give it any thought. Wonderful nuance.
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Re: I remember
I don't recall that article you mention, but any guy who puts his son in a headlock over a towel being on the floor and then writes an article about it deserves 200 plus critical letters. Likewise, so does the twit who wrote about his biting, out-of-control preschooler, Elijah, and then blamed the preschool for having the nerve to expel his little darling.
I like Anne Lamott’s writing, but I cannot help but feeling slightly queasy at times after writing about her son. Unless this kid has given his consent to be written about, I feel that these stories about him are an invasion of privacy. Granted, it has been 12 years since I was his age but the idea of my mother writing about me and posting it were all in sundry could see it would have horrified me.
I doubt that anyone would approve of me writing up anecdotes about friend’s, siblings or co-workers kids so why is it okay for these parents to use their kids as fodder? (Being a parent does not mean you own the right the write about your child.)