Store Bought: Part 6

My dad taught us that you don’t buy anything that you already have. When my parents purchased our house, there was no plumbing, just an outhouse in the backyard. My dad used the boards from the outhouse walls as wainscoting in the new, real bathroom that he made for us which has plumbing and electricity.

My dad taught us that you don’t buy anything you can make for yourself. A few winters ago, he asked to borrow my sewing machine and spent a weekend cutting and stitching together new fabric for his snowmobile seat. It didn’t look like a craft project when he was done with it, either. It was sleek and professional. Dad taught us that you don’t throw away something you can reuse. When the old movie theater in town was being demolished, my dad went and found old wrought iron railings that were going to be thrown out. They now adorn our staircase.

He taught us that you don’t buy something new that is just as good used. Our kitchen stove was made in 1917. It’s the kind that’s pearly white, and has long sleek legs, because the oven and stove are side by side. No one had thought to stack them yet.

He taught us that you don’t throw things out if you can fix them. My dad bought his snowmobile suit the year I was born for fifty cents at a yard sale. He still wears it, and every few weeks during the winter, he sits on the couch with a sewing needle, dental floss as thread, and patches the knees or the pockets or the zipper.

My dad has systems for cutting wood, stacking wood, and storing wood. Every year he makes new plans and sometimes draws little sketches in his notebook of how he will stack the wood this year so that we can fit enough in our garage to last us from the end of September though the beginning of May. Last year we didn’t have to turn on the thermostat for the oil furnace once, because we were able to keep the woodstove burning all winter long. My dad taught us that you don’t buy stuff you don’t need.

As a kid, these were difficult concepts to accept. New stuff is exciting. Did you know that other families have linoleum floors? In other houses, there’s a window on the oven door, and you can see dinner cooking without even opening it. Have you ever seen a movie on a big screen TV? It’s amazing.

As a young adult with a budget, though, it’s convenient to have grown up with a “cheap, cheap man,” as my brother, Josh, used to call him. There are so many things that people think they need – or want to need. Like anyone, I covet the unnecessaries – trendy nail polish, cell phones with lots of tiny buttons, cell phones with no buttons, and limited edition ice cream – but it’s more comforting than inconvenient to know that I will never be a victim of stuff.

Store Bought: Part 5

Check in later for more Store Bought posts.

Store Bought: Part 4

For us, Judy’s death was like one of those scenes when a guy walks through a door, looks down, and realizes there’s no floor and he’s just stepped off the edge of a cliff. None of us saw it coming and afterwards we realized that everything that we thought was normal and reliable about our lives was not.

Store Bought: Part 3

In my family, you were not allowed to open your toy until you finished your Happy Meal. Not that I ate Happy Meals very often. I bet I’ve eaten less than fifteen of them in my life. I’ve eaten enough, though, to remember that after you eat your french fries, your fingers get all greasy and it’s difficult to pry the plastic packaging open to get your miniature Barbie out. I remember the excitement of holding a warm bag of salty food on my lap on the way home from one of Rebecca’s hockey games. I remember sitting at the McDonald’s in Gardiner, Maine, with my Dad, dipping greasy nuggets into sweet and sour sauce and thinking that I was experiencing fine dining.

Around eleven or twelve – the prime age to switch from Happy Meals to Number Five Meals with soda instead of milk, and cardboard, not paper packages for fries – I stopped eating fast food almost entirely. I’m not sure why it happened. Maybe once my sister went off to college we spent less time on the road. Maybe I had learned to pack my own dinners by then. Maybe once I started running track my body craved more wholesome food. Maybe I was finally old enough to sit through the entire three hour trip to Belmont, Massachusetts to visit my grandparents a few times a month without needing to stop at the Kennebunk rest stop on I-95. Most likely it was a combination of all these things. It wasn’t a sudden decision on my part to protest fast food. It just happened.

During the fall of my sophomore year at Cony High School I was in cross country, jazz band, jazz combo, pep band, symphonic band, and piano lessons. Eating at the Bangor Street McDonald’s became a necessity some days, but I was surprised to find that I wasn’t hungry for Number Five Meals. I didn’t particularly want anything on the menu, except, perhaps, a Happy Meal. My memories of them endured, and I can truthfully admit that they were happy meals.

I didn’t get Happy Meals anymore, though. Usually I bought the Fruit and Walnut Salad. It wasn’t particularly good, but it at least didn’t make me queasy to look at like the burgers did. McDonald’s had slipped out of my identity. When I walked in, I no longer saw la vie en rose. I saw dusty corners and plastic forks in plastic wrappers. I saw a line that stood between me and symphonic band in fifteen minutes. And when I saw it like this – all naked and splotchy – I couldn’t defend it. I couldn’t convince myself that yellow-green pickles and moist hamburger buns tasted good.

Store Bought: Part 2

When somebody dies, the first thing you do is think about walking in their front door and seeing them look up from the magazine they are reading on the couch. You drop your keys on the counter and give them a quick hug. Then you think about how you can never, never do that ever again. Even if there is a God and you both somehow end up in heaven, you think about how it couldn’t possibly be as good as being able to see them in real life, with their worn in skin and marble eyes.

What you realize much later after someone dies is that the person will be gone forever, but the front door and the magazine and the keys are still there. Home & Garden will be what heals you. You’ll see it on the coffee table while everyone is clearing away plates and cups after the post-funeral brunch. For a few minutes, you’ll settle on the couch and flip through the pages. You’ll stroke the creases in the pages and fall into the advertisements for cabinet stains and luxury vacuum cleaners. An article about raised-bed gardens will catch your attention and a photograph of them will make your vision all blurry. Now every time you see Home & Garden, it’s like a squeeze on your hand.

Store Bought: Part I

For the last few months I have been working on a memoir called Store Bought, about how products can become heirlooms and what the limitations of comfort are in commercialism. The piece will be posted in sections, so keep in mind that to read the sections in order, you must read the oldest ones first.

Newsflash: There’s More Than One Way to Get News

The last time I watched the news voluntarily for more than two minutes was the 2008 presidential elections.  The time before was that was the 2004 elections, I think.  I try to read the New York Times more often, but that endeavor usually turns out to be as successful as my sporadic flossing regimens.  To be honest, I usually find traditional news simultaneously boring and overwhelming.  There are a few sources that do keep me in the loop, though.  This American Life and The Daily Show are my two regular media fixes that I can enjoy while keeping track of the world outside my window.         

 

1.  If you’ve never listened to This American Life on public radio before, you’ll think it sounds stupid when I say that I was stirring my boiling macaroni in captivated suspense this afternoon while I listened to a story about a man trying to produce a puppy channel on TV and why guys like Rupert Madoff rejected the idea.  Without encountering This American Life before, you couldn’t understand how this weekly radio show breaks apart the folklore of American life – faith, disaster, love, entrepreneurship, history, and epiphany – and separates it into the tiny, personal stories that created these mega-themes.  This American Life is not a news show.  However, it does spend a lot of time explaining American trends and culture that I hadn’t understood before listening.  For me, the one hour show is the opportunity to reflect about the unique and sometimes absurd directions people's lives can take them and consider the route that I am taking.  Download a podcast of the show for free from itunes and check out their site at thisamericanlife.org. 

 

2.  Okay – it’s not a real news program.  Real news doesn’t make poop jokes or have nearly as diverse a team of reporters.  However, despite the fact that The Daily Show is intended to be entertainment, you still get more truth per minute (tpm) than you would from watching FOX and you can catch quick highlights of the day’s events without having to pretend that you are a current events/world affairs expert.  Of course, The Colbert Report is another legitimate fake news option if a faux depiction of right-wing conservative republicans is what you are after, but I still find Jon Stewart’s satire a more daring attempt to unveil the biased, misleading, and self-serving beast that American news media has become.  

 

Traditional TV news is just not right for me, and for all I know, my methods might not be right for you.  However, I do think that keeping up with the news is important, and should not be painful to injest.  If you need a new method, try reading blogs; checking out local newspapers (which are usually much thinner/quicker to read than The Globe); or reading newsmagazines like Time, which give more in-depth stories once a week, rather than brief stories every day.  Be realistic while you’re looking at your options; if the source bores you on the first day, you’re not going to be able to force yourself through it week after week, so don’t waste your time. 

Even though keeping up with the news seems geeky, it provides many useful skills, like being able to relate history to current events in essays for class, and being better at shouting out answers while watching Jeopardy, not to mention molding you into an informed and engaged citizen.  Once you find a good source, it can be easy to do thoughtful, interesting, and intellectual activities all on your own!