No Charm School Charmer #2

A version in poetry, in contrast to the prose version. This is a good example of how my poetry comes from a much deeper and more honest place than my prose.

Charm School

They sent me to Charm School
that graduation summer.
Each day I dressed for Park Avenue:
black high heels and gartered hose,
dress hemmed below my pristine knees.
Even white gloves, the eternal symbol
of lady-like correctness.

They sent me to Charm School
to smooth my ragged edges,
remove me from the music
and the bad boys who played it
and give me the face that they
wanted to show the world.
And I went, my last concession.

The sent me to Charm School,
where I learned to sit with ankles,
(not knees) crossed, hands cupped
demurely in a lap that never opened.
They amended my eyebrows, hair,
tried to dislodge my unpleasant
speech, bearing, attitude.

They send me to Charm School.
And the one thing I remember
is how Loretta Young could open
a door into crowded room and
gracefully turn her back
on her eager audience.

They sent me to Charm School,
but their bright fantasies and
those charming illusions,
could not defuse the dark fire
that fuels my recalcitrant soul.

No Charm School Charmer

(Reprised from a piece I wrote that was published on a defunct blog called “Time Goes By”. I found it when I Googled myself.)

When I graduated high school in 1957 at the age of 17, my parents were reluctant to send me away to college for fear that I would get even “wilder” than they already thought I was.

I wasn’t really wild – I mean, I did date a guy with a motorcycle. I did once stay out until 2AM sitting on the curb talking with a boy I knew who had just run away from boarding school. I did come home a little drunk several times. Well, I guess I can see why my folks were worried.

So they enrolled me in the John Robert Powers Charm School on Fifth Avenue in New York City, and I spent three days a week that summer before leaving home getting my rough edges polished. I took the commuter train from Yonkers, dressed 50s appropriately in stockings, heels, a dress and white gloves. No white shoes, however. These were not considered appropriate for city wear, even in the summer.

There were several other girls my age in my charm school class, but the only two I remember are a slim, athletic and naturally attractive girl from Darien, Connecticut, and a short, ill-proportioned, homely girl who lived in a grand manor on the Long Island Sound. I know that because the wealthy girl invited the other two of us to a party at her house. She came to pick me up in a limo and asked me and the other girl to stay overnight.

Coming from a middle class family, I was pretty overwhelmed by the family portraits on the walls, the tennis courts overlooking the Sound, the maid who served us breakfast in the morning, the rugs that seemed as soft as pillows. I don’t think the girl from Darien was as impressed; I think she came from a similar background.

I had nothing in common with those two girls, but for three days a week for six weeks, we helped each other get through the training that each of us was being forced to endure because our parents felt we had something lacking.

We had elocution lessons from a dramatically made-up young woman (probably an aspiring actress) who had us repeat “the little bottle is on the metal table” and “the man ate a ham sandwich” to train our ears and tongues away from our New York City area accents.

We learned to put on a fur coat without elbowing anyone nearby (I have never owned a fur coat). We learned how to sit on the edge of a chair with our ankles crossed and how to gracefully get up and down from sitting on the floor without exposing anything private.
We learned how to style our hair, what clothes we looked best in, and how apply makeup. And, yes, we learned to walk with a book balanced on our heads. I still have the ring binder with notes and pictures that I cut from magazines to illustrate what I was learning.

Most interestingly, for me, we learned how to enter and exit a room like Loretta Young did at the beginning and end of her television series in the 50s. (I have made use of that technique many times.) The trick is to turn you back on the people in the room with a graceful flourish. The swirling skirts give it that extra flair.

I never kept in touch with those two girls whom I met in charm school. I imagine that the girl from Connecticut wound up marrying a doctor or a lawyer and continued to play tennis. I thought often of the girl from Larchmont-on-the-Sound, for whom no amount of learned charm could change her acne or large nose or her odd shape. I still wonder how her life went. Maybe her parents made her get plastic surgery. Maybe she grew into a strong, self-aware woman who took control of her own life. Maybe she became a therapist who helps other awkward young women discover who they are and want to be.

As for me, I went away to college and I rarely went back home except for major holidays. I even stayed on campus over the summers and took courses. I stayed out late, drank, partied and procrastinated. I wrote poetry, danced in musicals, joined a sorority, was feature editor of the school paper, and graduated. I stayed through graduate school.

I found that I rarely used any of the techniques I learned in the John Robert Powers Charm School. And when I did, it usually was to get a laugh.

Dooce is Dead

“Dooce” was the blogger name of Heather Armstrong.

The pioneering mommy blogger Heather Armstrong, who laid bare her struggles as a parent and her battles with depression and alcoholism on her site Dooce.com and on social media, has died at 47.

As a personal blogger back in the early blogging days, Dooce inspired and pushed the envelope for many of us trying to establish our own authentic voices on the internet.  As she succeeded in writing herself into existence, she paved the way for personal bloggers, like me, to use that public format as a way to navigate our ways through tumultuous personal times because we did not have to feel isolated and unheard.

For me, it included years of being an abused caregiver; the five days I sat with my mother while she died;  my debilitating struggle with not being about to fall asleep; my experiments with medical marijuana; and my ultimate sleep solution with an unusual pharmaceutical.

Like Dooce, I suffered from depression, but unlike her, I have been able to control mine, and, in association with that, to finally fix my sleep problem.  For years, I tried to convince doctors that my inability  to fall asleep was a matter of inefficient brain chemistry.  While my depression meds triggered certain neurotransmitters that produce the chemicals that supported mood, they did not deal with dopamine.  After doing extensive reading on the subject, I was convinced that my brain’s inability to trigger dopamine was behind both my mood swings and my sleep deprivation.  A psychiatrist finally prescribed Abilify (which triggers dopamine) and my problems were solved.

I think of what Dooce endured as she struggled to find a solution to her depression.  Her depression grew worse, leading her to enroll in a clinical trial at the University of Utah’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. She was put in a chemically induced coma for 15 minutes at a time for 10 sessions.

She finally committed suicide.  What if her struggle could have been lessened if she just were given the blend of meds that would have balanced her brain chemistry?  Why isn’t there  more research being done to produce the pharmaceuticals that will help brain neurotransmitters produce and maintain the necessary balance of the chemicals necessary for mood balance: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins?  One big motherfucker happy pill that balances imbalanced brain chemistry.

Dooce committed suicide because life’s pain was more than she could handle.

Last night on the series “911: Lone Star”, a character with the last stages of Huntington’s Disease commits suicide, using what looks like helium inhalation. I happen to believe in the right of an individual in terminal stages of an illness to choose to end their life on their own terms.

I also believe that folks should be more comfortable talking about death and dying. ,  Back in 2010, there was a movement to set up “Death Cafes”.

At a Death Cafe people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death. A Death Cafe is a group directed discussion of death with no agenda, objectives or themes. It is a discussion group rather than a grief support or counselling session.

I, for one, would love to  have access to a Death Cafe, and even suggested that a local senior center hold one.  The idea was never even considered.

At  age 83, I think about dying, since it could happen any day, now.  I also think about living, and doing what I can to make what life I have left continue to be a hoot.  But I would love to meet with kindred folks who, like me, want to be emotionally ready when the time comes, not matter how it comes.

Dooce is dead, too young, too fraught with pain.  There had to have been a better way for her.  There has to be a better way for all of us.

Buddha and The Babe

This is part of my altar that features a Laughing Buddha and the Venus of Willendorf.

Buddha and The Babe

The body parts of the ancient female figure are exaggerated, and many scholars believe that figures such as this one were considered fertility goddesses.

Abundance, luxuriousness, and productiveness are all considered synonyms for “fertility”, all of which relate to the attributes applied to both icons. The gifts that these symbols represent are very similar:  the comfort, security, and stability of having more than “enough.”

It is what we all want, yet millions of humans around the world have barely enough.  Five years ago, a study reported that 40% of Americans do not have enough resources for the basic necessities of food, clothing, and shelter.  Researchers state that, although economic growth and low unemployment are “critical to reducing material hardship,” they “alone do not ensure everyone can meet their basic needs.”

An article on the Santa  Clara website by Joseph Westfall,  a research assistant at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, offers a cogent argument for Social Welfare.  He begins with this:

When Congress and the president negotiated over welfare reform in 1996, a key element of the debate was whether government aid should continue to be an entitlement, a grant the poor receive solely by virtue of being poor.

Ultimately, the bill that passed last August changed welfare from an entitlement to a block-grant program for states; states are now free to set their own eligibility criteria and may limit access to welfare in various ways, including limits on the length of time a family may receive assistance.

Still, the basic ethical issues behind the debate persist. Is society responsible for the well-being of the poor? If so, at what cost to the rest of the community? Are the poor to be held in any way responsible for themselves? How far must poverty go before society is morally bound to act?

He cites philosopher  Peter Singer, who  writes, “[I]f it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.” For Singer, social welfare is not only a “good thing to do,” it is a moral imperative.

Beef up your argument for Social Welfare by reading Westfall’s article.

And take a look at my son, Bix’s blog post responding to Biden’s statement where the President refers to the necessity and dignity of having a “job”: “It’s about being able to look your kid in the eye and say, ‘Honey, it’s going to be OK,’ and mean it.”

Bix, who calls himself a Mediocre Autistic, has this to say:

You know what else would let people look their kid in the eye and say this? Universal basic income. Medicare For All. Orienting our society around social welfare rather than the scarcity lie of extractive capital.

My dignity is inherent. I’m born with it. So are you. Biden, as I said, would scoff at a suggestion that he doesn’t believe this; no doubt he’d call the charge “malarkey”.

But there’s only one way to read a statement like “a job is about your dignity”, and if it isn’t what he means, then he should say what he means and mean what he says, because saying what he did serves only to lessen the lives of those who can’t work.

 

 

Getting Back in the Personal Blog Saddle

More than 20 years ago, my son, Bix (who is autistic but didn’t know it back then) got me into blogging.  The personal connections that I made back then helped to get me through some rough caregiving years.  We all posted every day, whatever was on our minds at the moment — politics, culture, health, family, mutual support, cats. We commented on each other’s posts and kept conversations going. We were a real community; we got to know each other pretty well.  Some of us even found a way to meet in person, but even those of us who never did, still developed real friendships.

But, times change, priorities change, culture changes. Life happens.

My last post pretty much explains why I have been otherwise occupied.  I am on my last great adventure — the adult love affair of my life.  At 82.  It has it’s challenges, especially since we live an hour away and each of us lives with our daughters.  But we are figuring it out, together.

Now that we are past the Solstice and into a new year, I’m going to make an effort to post more often.  There are still things I care about, struggles I and others are going through.  Maybe there will be a way to slowly build another blogging community, but even if not, I will again follow the example of my son and get my blogging hat back on and see where it goes.

One of the things that has gotten my brain interested in writing again was a request from my daughter to write my story for my grandson, Lex.  The request actually came as a gift last Christmas from Storyworth.com, which provided a question every day that I could answer, with the idea that it would all be printed into a book at the end.  I opted just to start telling my story (I just finally started), and I have until January 16 to finish it.

My circadian sleep disorder is still not under control.   Medical marijuana usually helps.  I manage it the best I can.

And so it goes.

 

 

Mad as the March Hare

It’s March. Lost, mindless Oestre chicks. Hares gone Mad with abandon.

March Madness is a crazy time, a neither/nor time. Neither winter nor spring. An in-between time. Neither asleep nor awake.

Mad March targets the tales of those who hide behind the shroud of surety and secrets, takes hold of souls wrapped in remnants of reason, sending them into the mad March wind, freeing the poet’s wonder to unseat what is mean, what is mad, what is best left to the whinings of past seasons gone to seed. Beware the March Hare, unless she is your cup of tea.

Big Picture, Little Picture

The Big Picture these days is like a Gordian Knot. From the domination of the patriarchy and its greed for power and resources, to the negation of any kind of true social and legal justice, fixing the Big Picture is going to take public persistence, strategic action, and (ultimately) creative cooperation to either unravel or discard the current system.

As a White, progressive, middle class extended family, we support working toward re-building our society into a world view that values all life, that prioritizes ethics, equity, compassion, and diversity, and that supports the development of the best of human potential to solve problems in ways that meet the needs of all sentient beings. We make an effort to find common ground – even with antagonists – as a starting point, and often that starting point begins in learning about, understanding, and accepting the truth of each person’s personal journeys and experiences. But too often antagonists don’t want to find common ground, and so there is no place to start or proceed, especially since we are living in a world that seems to have lost all shades of gray.

Decades ago, my (now) adult son was mugged and beaten by three men of color who robbed him of the meager amount that was available via his ATM. Because he was nurtured to understand the influence of the local environment in which these men most likely lived, he was able to move beyond anger and “hate”. As an adult, autistic and afraid of violence, he still lives his life committed to social justice and intersectionality. The road he travels is bumpy, indeed. But he persists in the best way he is able: by intelligent research, analysis, and writing.

When my grandson was 7 or 8 (he is now 17), he became enamored of firemen and their uniforms. Every week, he visited our local fire station, getting to know the firemen personally. Finally, they gave him a discarded uniform, including sections of the hose. He was so excited, he even wore the stuff grocery shopping.

I suppose his love of “costumes” was reinforced by the fact that we are a family with some history in theatrical performance, and his progression into costumes of “authority” was fueled by his feeling secure and protected when he wore them – fire fighter, EMT, detective, police, Dr. Who, Jedi.

So, despite all of his commitment to fairness, ethics, justice, and the goals of Black Lives Matter, and despite his acknowledgment that our system of policing needs to be overhauled, he cannot ignore his empathy toward the plight of some law enforcers – the cop who gets shot and leaves a wife and baby behind; the cop who doesn’t come forward and report unnecessary police violence because he is afraid his partner won’t give him the backup he might need in violent situations; the cop who needs his job to support his extended family.

In addition, my grandson is involved with an online game along with a young POC policeman from the Midwest who has become his friend. That cop has an unmarked police car that is his to drive and even take home. But he does not want to park that car in his driveway because he is afraid to make it public that he is a cop; he is afraid of his family being victimized by opposition forces.

The backlash my grandson gets from his “social justice warrior” friends when he tries to explain his feelings about the police, in his words, “hurts his soul.” But he perseveres in trying to explain why he feels the way he does.

We talk about these things over the dinner table. I tend to come down on the radical side of issues. He is a reminder to me not to forget that each individual has a personal history that is often ignored by critics – a history that might have room for some deserved “walk a mile in his shoes” empathy.

Many of today’s police are trained to believe they must be invincible and to accept violence in order to survive. In some ways, they are victims, whose own fears and bigotries have been co-opted to support a narrow view of law and order. My grandson reminds me that there often are understandable reasons why many of today’s police do what they do; there are understandable reasons why some folks are driven to rob convenience stores, at lethal gunpoint, for basic necessities. To keep our humanity, our empathy, strong, we need to be able to see some gray within all of the overwhelming “either/or” culture.

While Rudyard Kipling was a man with controversial political views, I am one of those who is able to look at art apart from the personal reputation of the artist. So I share with you a personally edited version of Kipling’s “If”, dedicated to my grandson. Edited pieces are in bold.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it all on you
If you can trust yourself when all folks doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And not worry if you seem too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And move beyond the stress of loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all folks count with you, and some too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ of your soul beguiled,
Your love of life will have no limit,
And you’ll find your destined place, my child.

I invite any readers to open a discussion of what I wrote here (harkening to the style of the original “blogosphere.”) Or at least leave a comment.

Dear Diary: Bring Back the Yippies

In 1967, I was married and had a five year old. While others were in Washington protesting the Vietnam War, the most I could do was make a peace banner and hang if off a branch on the tree half-way up our driveway.

The Yippies, officially

What I would have love to have done is political street theater, like the Yippies, who became famous when they banded together in the mid-sixties to “Stick it to the Man”. At the 1968 DNC convention they organized an absurdist counter-convention — including nominating a pig for president. They named themselves the Youth International Party to give themselves a sense of legitimacy.

Their colorful protest methods were tailor made for the television cameras .For example, once they poured into the vast main concourse of Manhattan’s Grand Central Station 3,000 strong, wearing their customary capes, gowns, feathers and beads. They tossed hot cross buns and firecrackers, and floated balloons up toward the celestial blue ceiling. They hummed the cosmic “Ommm,” snake-danced to the tune of Have a Marijuana, and proudly unfurled a huge banner emblazoned with a lazy “Y.”

While Yippies were a radical bunch, their basic philosophy paralleled the movements today to establish equality in all areas of American life:  We want everyone to control their own life and to care for one another … We cannot tolerate attitudes, institutions, and machines whose purpose is the destruction of life, the accumulation of profit.

The Yippies used mockery, ridicule and silliness to call attention to the wrongs of our society. Imagine how our current president would be affected by this kind of outrageous public contempt. What if a new generation of Yippies performed an exorcism on the White House, the way they did it on the Pentagon in 1967 at the “Be-in” protest against the Vietnam War.

This is how it went back then:

The initial conception of the protest had been to occupy the Capitol, but that might have sent the wrong signal to the public, suggesting that the marchers wanted to shut down the democratic process and thus were offering only more political negativity.

So, instead, they came up with the idea of an exorcism that would levitate the Pentagon 300 feet. Since the five-sided pentagram was symbol of the occult, representing evil forces at work in the world, the Pentagon was a natural symbol of the evil war and itwould serve as a far more resonant target than the Capital..  Time magazine later reported the intention of the proposed ritual would turn the Pentagon “orange and vibrate until all evil emissions had fled” and the war would come to an immediate end.

On the makeshift altar before the Pentagon, a number of competing rituals began simultaneously to unfold. Ed Sanders, of the rock band the Fugs, delivered an impromptu, sexually suggestive invocation punctuated with repeated calls of “Out, demons, out!” Allen Ginsberg declaimed mantras for the cause.

Two hundred pounds of flowers were trucked in and distributed to the crowd. When military police and marshals confronted the protesters, images of gun barrels blooming with daisies became the iconic photographs of the day.

As we approach November, I can’t help wishing there were a new version of the Yippies to dramatize the absurdities of our current Cheeto-in-Charge. I’m not suggesting that they disrupt the convention; rather I’m suggesting that for the two months before elections, a swarm of costumed political pranksters organize “guerilla theater” events to draw the attention of the public and the media to (my words) drive tRump even more crazy.

If he is even the least bit superstitious, I’m sure that anything smacking of magic and mystery will fuel his paranoia and insecurities. So how about an exorcism on the White House to rid it of negative energies — racism, bigotry, misogyny, elitism, etc. etc.

While there are no more Yippies, perhaps a gathering of witches:

ON MIDNIGHT LAST Friday, all over the United States, an alliance of magical practitioners called the Magic Resistance gathered Tarot cards, feathers, orange and white candles, pins, water, salt, matches, ashtrays, and unflattering photos of President Trump. The objects are prerequisites for a binding spell, an incantation typically used to keep someone from harming themselves or others, like a magical straitjacket.

..Magic (and particularly witchcraft) has been a form of protest for decades, probably centuries, but protest magic has burst into the media and broader public consciousness only twice in recent memory: during the 1960s and now, during Trump’s presidency. In the ‘60s there were the yippies, but also the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell—W.I.T.C.H.—a pointy-hatted wing of the women’s liberation movement.

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-witches/

In 2016, the anonymous W.I.T.C.H. movement was resurrected by a group in Portland, Oregon, inspired by the injustice they see in the world around them, and in their own backyards ….. Sometimes they hand out tarot cards at events, edited to include a message such as “A vote for the health-care bill will mean DEATH for millions of Americans” on the death card. On their YouTube channel, they posted a video of one of the rituals they performed before a protest: the “binding” of Donald Trump.

The exorcism of the White House can be done virtually on a specific night over Zoom or some other platform. With enough chatter about it over social media before hand, perhaps the mainstream media might also cover it. The point would be to make our Hitler-Wannabe nervous and insecure as he is surrounded by the notion that mysterious enemy forces, over which he has no control, gave gathered to erode his power and his sanity. What great fun to add some fun to ensuring that he loses the election.

These are the sites I used for background information:

https://www.history.com/news/yippies-1968-dnc-convention

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_IntFor ernational_Party

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-rag-tag-group-acid-dropping-activists-tried-levitate-pentagon-180965338/

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/chicago10/yippies.htm

It’s Just Another Christmas Eve

How different my holidays are from when I was a child, part of a large extended Polish family, for whom Vigilia (Christmas Eve) was a major event, with all of the traditional foods and traditions.

The only thing I have left is one ornament that says Merry Christmas in Polish.

After I got divorced, since my kids would spend Christmas Eve with me and Christmas Day with their Dad, we started our own food tradition. I let the kids choose. They wanted a meat fondue. And we continue that tradition today.  Having to wait for our chunks of protein to simmer until ready means that we have to sit around the table for a while (unlike our usual “eat dinner together and then go our separate ways”).

 We tend not to eat beef, so we usually have chicken; but this year we broke with tradition so that Lex, my grandson, could try beef. (Which, unfortunately, he likes.)

We did manage to make and decorate some cookies — from Baby Yoda (which Lex devoured rather quickly) to the wreath “painted” by my art-major son-in-law. (I have to say that I love that Lex wears the “Jughead” hat I made for him all of the time.)

My daughter has successfully installed replacements for the traditions I left behind. Over the past week or so, she has cooked dinners from the various ethnic traditions of our genetics — German, Swedish, Lithuanian.  We often have Polish and Italian food, so there was no need to repeat those.  And it’s a Christmas Eve tradition for us to watch Polar Express together after dinner while we have dessert.   I decided to forego yet another watch and retired to my computer to struggle with this post.  (I am still have problems using this new fangled WordPress platform; but I’m intent on figuring it out; I have been at it for three  hours  now.)

Somewhere in Yonkers, my younger cousins are feasting on their home made pierogi, carrying on the old traditions,using recipes that have been handed down for generations.  I have yet to find store-bought peirogi that come anywhere near those our mothers made.  I’m too lazy to do all of the work to make my own.

I don’t know if they sing Polish “kolendy” (Christmas Carols), but I know they get their families together and share old memories.  I’m not in touch with them these days because he is their president, and he’s not mine.

I have fond memories of those Polish Christmases as a child.  I probably don’t remember them the same way that my cousins do.

I’m a poet.  I am all Eye.

December 24, 1948

There is no mistaking this immigrant clan
for anything but a matriarchy,
bringing from its Polish homeland
the fundamentals of family, earthy foods,
a deference to the will of the grayest female.

The men earn hard money, revere their vodka,
as it was on the farms of the old country.
The rest is woman’s right and work.
So, when the magical time of Vigil Eve draws near
the men disappear into their smoky enclaves
to share sad fatherland memories,

while the women gather in her kitchen,
a determined lineage of daughters,
by birth and marriage, armed with
the culinary legacies of generations.

For days, they roll, flour, fill, and pinch,
while we children sit on the floor, eye level to legs,
playing with scraps of pasty dough,
lulled by the soft humming of female voices,
the steady rumble of snowy urban streets.

The night flows with prayers and feasting,
as families gather at the gray lady’s call,
reviving ancient rites of pine and light,
singing the language and history of their people
carried across oceans of fear and hope.

They sing of homeland yearnings for freedom and faith,
of the tears of mountaineers displaced and despaired,
of the battles of heroes to free the heart’s land,
of mystical mothers and magical births.

Generations of voices in harmony
drift through the lace-curtained windows
open to the cold winter night, that night
when animals talk, wishes are granted,
and ancient rituals forge the primal bonds of blood.

The Gaming Life

Everyone in my family plays computer/video games except me. For the most part, it’s a generational thing, and I’ve posted before about how I feel about it.

My 15 year old grandson plays with teens he’s met in real life and online, and their goal is to get a team together to play in a tournament. ESports. Yes,it’s a thing.

According to Marcus Clarke of computerplanet.co.uk, gaming is turning into a serious profession. eSports, video gaming competitions, are expected to become a billion-dollar industry by the year 2018, with millions of people visiting eSports events in person, and even more people streaming them online.

Recently, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has stated that professional gamers spend as much time practicing as professional athletes spend in training. They also said that “the Summit agreed that ‘eSports’ are showing strong growth, especially within the youth demographic across different countries, and can provide a platform for engagement with the Olympic Movement.” Although for true fans eSports do not need to be compared with other sports to be considered valuable, it is certainly positive to see the world finally acknowledging the effort we put into video gaming.

 

I know that there’s no turning back the clock on computer games, and making them a way to accumulate big bucks only solidifies their place in our culture.

As I notice the time that my grandson plays gaming, however, I’m concerned about the sedentary lifestyle that serious gaming ensures. So, in our family, folks, including my grandson, wear a “Fitbit” type bracelet set to remind them to get up and move every so often.

It’s a strange new world that necessitates being reminded that the body needs a life as well as the brain. I can’t help remember an old Star Trek episode with aliens that had big brains and frail bodies.

It’s going to be interesting to watch my grandson and his teammates try to enter the world of eSports. He’s well aware that they will probably wipe out during the very first round, but a least there will be no broken bones or concussions. As with kids playing any sport, parents need to be aware and involved to make sure that their kids are playing it safely.

As for adults — hell, who wouldn’t want a chance to win over 2 million dollars sitting at a computer playing a game. They just better invest some of that in a Fitbit.