Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again, but Expecting Different Results.
Part I.
I did not enjoy the last playgroup I joined out here. I got involved when I saw a blurb in our community newsletter, nestled in among headlines such as "Association Fees Rising from $30 to $40" and "No, Motherfuckers, We Still Won't Pay to Send Snowplows** Though, so We Hope You Enjoy Your Anti-Lock Brakes."* It said that a woman in the neighborhood would be organizing playgroups, and a number was provided for interested parties. Alex was about 10 months old at the time, and I was staying at home with him, and could not have been more bored. It would be nice, I reasoned, for Alex to do a little networking on the baby scene, and maybe I could find a group to hang out with. The kids could play; we could get drunk and gripe about shit. We could make lunches and Bloody Marys! We could fill up the baby pool and drink gin & tonics! We could put on the Baby Reggae cds and smoke spleefs! A fine time would be had by all! I will wait for the laughter from all the other mothers to die down before I tell you it did not exactly work out this way.
There was griping, yes. But it was not the kind of griping I had expected. The first session I attended, 45 minutes were spent moaning over the valves that attach to the underneath of the lids of sippy cups that prevents them from leaking. These valves, I grew to understand, were Not Good. 45 minutes worth of not good. I have never had any sort of problem worth mentioning with sippy cup valves, but for the most part we don't pick our nemeses, so Mothers v. Sippy Cup Valves it was. So I sat that topic out. The next 45 minutes was devoted to last week's episode of "Survivor," a show I didn't watch. So I sat there, waiting for something I could connect with. I waited for over a year, sitting there feeling like Despair*** from the Sandman comics. I don't know about most people, but the longer I sit in a group when it is clear it is not the group for me, the more I start fretting over how I should phrase whatever it was I'd say next. This made me come across as extremely calculated and grasping. Even worse, I had convinced myself it was to Alex's benefit that we stay in a group where I was not invisible as much as a black hole, sucking out all the air in the room. This is not strictly true. If it was a soccer team and I felt excluded sitting on the bench while Alex ran around and was clearly having a swell time, that would be one thing. But these were babies, ranging from 6 to 12 months. They mostly sat there and stared at car keys. Alex wouldn't have missed a thing.
While I sat there, absorbing light and sound, I became fascinated with the sheer fuck up-edness of the group leader's marriage.
Alpha had married a man who did not want a wife or children. They had been dating for 5 years when she made the deal with him that he would not have to do anything but go to work and she would handle everything else. Compare this to my relationship, where I am as lazy as I can get away with being until Steve lights a fire under my ass, and you'll see how morbidly fascinating I found this arrangement. This was different from what the conservative folk like to call "traditional marriage." In those marriages, men go to work and women stay home. Unlike Alpha's marriage, however, Promisekeeper men come home and play with their kids, help with homework, go to Parent-Teacher meetings, etc. Alpha's husband did not want to be bothered with any of that crap, period. Alpha told us that during her first pregnancy he begged her for permission to get a vascectomy.**** She said she put him off for a year, then started poking holes in the condoms and claimed that the second pregnancy was accidental. He punched a hole in the wall and got a vascectomy when she was pregnant with the second. After the first baby was born, he would not take any pictures, he would not change any diapers, he would not get up in the middle of the night, he would not let Alpha go anywhere without taking the baby with her. Sometimes Alpha would leave the house after the baby had been put down for the night and get some time alone. If the baby woke up and started to cry, however, the husband would call Alpha on her cell phone and she would have to drive home from wherever she was to come home and take care of the baby. He would sit there in his chair while his child screamed upstairs, no matter how long it took Alpha to get home. Really. They had a golden lab that had to be put in a cage and muzzled whenever he was at home because he didn't like animals and didn't want to hear it walking around and barking.
Imagine how much material you'd have to work with if you were their therapist.
I sat, hunched, every Thursday, waiting for Alpha to start talking.
"J. accepted a job in New Jersey yesterday morning. It's a great job and they're giving him money to buy a new house and pay for a move, but he didn't even ask me about it. When I said to him, 'J., are you forgetting to ask your wife about it?' he just told me I knew what I was getting into when I married him and I could suck it up or take the kids and move back in with Mom.'"
On September 12th, 2001, the group complained that the "big fuss" over the previous day was probably going to interrupt Must-See TV. The next Thursday, instead of going to playgroup I sat at home on the floor next to Alex with my next door neighbor and her daughter. We drank Bloody Marys. I didn't feel like Despair at all.
__________________________________
*The Punctuation Footnote: See how I now put the punctuation mark inside the quotation mark? And some of you in the Comments Lounge said there was nothing to be learned from Eats, Shoots & Leaves.*****
**The Snowplow Footnote: Originally, I spelled this word "snowplough" until Steve told me I was wrong. I looked it up and found that the American spelling is "snowplow" and the British spelling is "snowplough." It is beginning to dawn on me that maybe I read too many books by the Brontë sisters in my formative years. Remember the part in Wuthering Heights when Heathcliff runs over Catherine with the snowplough? Good times, good times.
***This statue is great. When I'm sitting in groups of women I can't relate to in any way, shape, or form, and they all seem to be relating to each other just fine, I feel exactly like this statue.
****I'm not very clear on this, actually. It seems that some doctors tell men they need written permission from their wives before they'll perform a vascectomy. Others don't. I've also heard from different sources as to the legality of this. It should go without saying that I believe that a human being should be able to have control over their reproductive systems, but I'll mention it anyway, just to make sure we're all on the same page.
*****Sorry about the order of the footnotes here. But not sorry enough to change it.
Part I.
I did not enjoy the last playgroup I joined out here. I got involved when I saw a blurb in our community newsletter, nestled in among headlines such as "Association Fees Rising from $30 to $40" and "No, Motherfuckers, We Still Won't Pay to Send Snowplows** Though, so We Hope You Enjoy Your Anti-Lock Brakes."* It said that a woman in the neighborhood would be organizing playgroups, and a number was provided for interested parties. Alex was about 10 months old at the time, and I was staying at home with him, and could not have been more bored. It would be nice, I reasoned, for Alex to do a little networking on the baby scene, and maybe I could find a group to hang out with. The kids could play; we could get drunk and gripe about shit. We could make lunches and Bloody Marys! We could fill up the baby pool and drink gin & tonics! We could put on the Baby Reggae cds and smoke spleefs! A fine time would be had by all! I will wait for the laughter from all the other mothers to die down before I tell you it did not exactly work out this way.
There was griping, yes. But it was not the kind of griping I had expected. The first session I attended, 45 minutes were spent moaning over the valves that attach to the underneath of the lids of sippy cups that prevents them from leaking. These valves, I grew to understand, were Not Good. 45 minutes worth of not good. I have never had any sort of problem worth mentioning with sippy cup valves, but for the most part we don't pick our nemeses, so Mothers v. Sippy Cup Valves it was. So I sat that topic out. The next 45 minutes was devoted to last week's episode of "Survivor," a show I didn't watch. So I sat there, waiting for something I could connect with. I waited for over a year, sitting there feeling like Despair*** from the Sandman comics. I don't know about most people, but the longer I sit in a group when it is clear it is not the group for me, the more I start fretting over how I should phrase whatever it was I'd say next. This made me come across as extremely calculated and grasping. Even worse, I had convinced myself it was to Alex's benefit that we stay in a group where I was not invisible as much as a black hole, sucking out all the air in the room. This is not strictly true. If it was a soccer team and I felt excluded sitting on the bench while Alex ran around and was clearly having a swell time, that would be one thing. But these were babies, ranging from 6 to 12 months. They mostly sat there and stared at car keys. Alex wouldn't have missed a thing.
While I sat there, absorbing light and sound, I became fascinated with the sheer fuck up-edness of the group leader's marriage.
Alpha had married a man who did not want a wife or children. They had been dating for 5 years when she made the deal with him that he would not have to do anything but go to work and she would handle everything else. Compare this to my relationship, where I am as lazy as I can get away with being until Steve lights a fire under my ass, and you'll see how morbidly fascinating I found this arrangement. This was different from what the conservative folk like to call "traditional marriage." In those marriages, men go to work and women stay home. Unlike Alpha's marriage, however, Promisekeeper men come home and play with their kids, help with homework, go to Parent-Teacher meetings, etc. Alpha's husband did not want to be bothered with any of that crap, period. Alpha told us that during her first pregnancy he begged her for permission to get a vascectomy.**** She said she put him off for a year, then started poking holes in the condoms and claimed that the second pregnancy was accidental. He punched a hole in the wall and got a vascectomy when she was pregnant with the second. After the first baby was born, he would not take any pictures, he would not change any diapers, he would not get up in the middle of the night, he would not let Alpha go anywhere without taking the baby with her. Sometimes Alpha would leave the house after the baby had been put down for the night and get some time alone. If the baby woke up and started to cry, however, the husband would call Alpha on her cell phone and she would have to drive home from wherever she was to come home and take care of the baby. He would sit there in his chair while his child screamed upstairs, no matter how long it took Alpha to get home. Really. They had a golden lab that had to be put in a cage and muzzled whenever he was at home because he didn't like animals and didn't want to hear it walking around and barking.
Imagine how much material you'd have to work with if you were their therapist.
I sat, hunched, every Thursday, waiting for Alpha to start talking.
"J. accepted a job in New Jersey yesterday morning. It's a great job and they're giving him money to buy a new house and pay for a move, but he didn't even ask me about it. When I said to him, 'J., are you forgetting to ask your wife about it?' he just told me I knew what I was getting into when I married him and I could suck it up or take the kids and move back in with Mom.'"
On September 12th, 2001, the group complained that the "big fuss" over the previous day was probably going to interrupt Must-See TV. The next Thursday, instead of going to playgroup I sat at home on the floor next to Alex with my next door neighbor and her daughter. We drank Bloody Marys. I didn't feel like Despair at all.
__________________________________
*The Punctuation Footnote: See how I now put the punctuation mark inside the quotation mark? And some of you in the Comments Lounge said there was nothing to be learned from Eats, Shoots & Leaves.*****
**The Snowplow Footnote: Originally, I spelled this word "snowplough" until Steve told me I was wrong. I looked it up and found that the American spelling is "snowplow" and the British spelling is "snowplough." It is beginning to dawn on me that maybe I read too many books by the Brontë sisters in my formative years. Remember the part in Wuthering Heights when Heathcliff runs over Catherine with the snowplough? Good times, good times.
***This statue is great. When I'm sitting in groups of women I can't relate to in any way, shape, or form, and they all seem to be relating to each other just fine, I feel exactly like this statue.
****I'm not very clear on this, actually. It seems that some doctors tell men they need written permission from their wives before they'll perform a vascectomy. Others don't. I've also heard from different sources as to the legality of this. It should go without saying that I believe that a human being should be able to have control over their reproductive systems, but I'll mention it anyway, just to make sure we're all on the same page.
*****Sorry about the order of the footnotes here. But not sorry enough to change it.
posted by flea at 1/03/2005 03:23:00 PM
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