The teacher, a humorous woman wearing a Guatemalan shawl, holds her stranded hair. With one hand, he held up a piece of black paper covered with orange residue. “This,” he said, “is the kind of design your kids should be involved in the last two weeks.”
It was our son’s “Open House” preschool, and we sat in small chairs, measuring paper cups of raw Martinelli apple juice on our knees. To avoid laughing out loud, I looked down and drank from a small cup, thankful as I did that it was carbonated. As I swallowed, I gazed out the window at the eucalyptus trees in the breeze.
At the risk of speaking again, I relied on my wife to whisper something with the appropriate glue, but one father then wanted to “consider” the question about the types of snacks that children were allowed in school. The bully’s mother asked how the teacher was coping with “the violence of the other kids who had a problem sharing things with others.” One wondered if kickball was so competitive when we really wanted to “promote cooperation.” I remember falling asleep, which is why I almost missed the teacher’s final announcement for the evening. “I have another announcement,” he said. “I want you all to know that from now on my name is no longer Sharon Roberts, it is Sharon Woman.”
It was the mid-1970s — Nixon, Vietnam, Kent State, Cesar Chavez, Saul Bellow, Pablo Neruda, Toni Morrison, Feminism… Self-Esteem, Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, I’m OK, You’re Ok, Earth Shoes, a Tract PTA called, “How to Tell If Your Child Is a Possible Hippie…” in other words, there were simple statistics — the more expensive the car, the more “comfortable” it was.
However, the majority of the population of New York’s Upper West Side, Marin County, and other places of protest and prestige, in West Los Angeles in the mid-70’s, were the epicenter of the controversy, the names turned into actions, and the art of raising children. was born.
As our President would like to say, let me be clear. Social media — in books, music, film, and television — often finds a place to breathe. That was the case in the 70’s and is still the case in 2011. But as we laughed at “All in the Family” and “Saturday Night Live,” and laughed at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, jokes seemed to never happen to us. Prove the number of cartoons and articles in the New Yorker affecting its middle class, usually urban subscribers. We laugh, but we joke?
It does not do so because we take our concerns too seriously, for we speak only of ourselves. We wear the same clothes and send our children to the same schools; we drive the same types of cars and buy in the same markets; we eat at the same restaurants and attend the same “parenting” workshops. Does anyone see the joke of Tiger Mom sending her child to the same school as Mother Helicopter sending her little soldier?
“Sharon Woman?” I said to another, we were walking towards the car park that night.
“She wants to be her own person,” said the woman, who was obviously disappointed that I had been in the cave for so long. Other than that, I don’t care what he is called as long as he prepares Jason for kindergarten.
“But only three…” I said, as my wife held me by the elbows.
Not long ago, I passed a park where preschool is still strong, and where former Sharon Roberts once helped my son make appropriate Halloween decorations. Maybe he was still watching for snack chips, but what I saw were children sitting in the same small chairs eating their lunch.
A young mother dressed in tight gym clothes rushed to Prius carrying a Whole Foods shopping bag. Aside from the sound of children’s voices, it was quiet, a pack of calm park in a crowded city. The leaves of large trees gleamed in the California sun. It was probably 1975.