Fuzzy Headed

About a year ago we lost a dear friend. He was a dad and he died suddenly and too young. The shock rippled through our social network.

I won’t share the whole story because it’s not my story to tell.

Fuzzy headed under this bird mask.

But the loss of this dear soul taught me an interesting thing about how people grieve. I am young and fortunate enough to have not experienced many instances of community-shared loss. But last year’s sadness showed me that people grieve like they live. And that’s cool with me.

If you often manage events and people, you will manage and organize grieving situations.

If you tend to withdraw and be quiet, that grief will go inward.

If you are sometimes the center of attention, you will grieve loudly in and public.

These are all good ways to grieve. Just get it out, man.

As part of the ripple effect I also learned something about my own style of grieving. It happened at my kid’s soccer game.

Here is the story.

The day after we found out about our friend, my middle kid had an indoor soccer game, aka futsol. Parking in the Mission was nuts, so I dropped off 3/5 of my family and took the toddler to park the car.

On the way in to the gym I ran into a dad friend who had also dropped off his family, parked the car, and was carrying his own toddler. We communed and bonded and cried a little bit while trying to keep our little ones from trouncing through the dog poop and weird trash that line the Mission sidewalks.

Emotion and stress make my head fuzzy, I learned. And not just my crazy wheat bran hair. My actual brain gets fuzzy.

I entered the gym in a daze, the noise and lights confounding my senses and bleary eyes. In my stupor I didn’t even realize that my daughter’s team wasn’t playing yet. The previous game had just ended and parents were still milling about and chatting, blocking the audience view from the bleachers.

Did I mention that I my head was fuzzy?

I wandered up to the group of chatty parents and asked if they wouldn’t mind moving because we couldn’t see our kids play.

AND THEY WENT SHITSHOW ON ME.

“You need to calm down!” yelled a tall white guy who probably lives in Cole Valley. (Yes, that is my explicit bias and I own it.)

“Jesus Christ, lady!” barked another one. He glared at me with the wrath of a thousand preschool parents trying to get into Rooftop.

Slow clap for San Francisco parenting one-upmanship at its worst.

Yes, I was wrong. (Did I mention that my head was fuzzy because my friend just died?) No, my kid’s game hadn’t started yet.

But their reaction was completely out of proportion for my minor infraction.

I stumbled back up into the bleachers, red-faced at my error and humiliated, as a small women being talked down to by some jacked up SF dads who thought they needed to put me in my place. I crawled to the top row, put my face in my hands and cried. Hard. I peeked through the snot and saw the chatty parents sneer at me. Mortifying.

After the game I told the whole story to my husband.

He suggested that I look at the instance as a reminder of our friend’s beautiful gift to see the perspective of others. This guy, this friend we lost, he had many inspiring qualities that I could go on about. But, remember, his is not my story to share.

I will say that he was excellent at trying to see the point of view of other people. He did empathy well. He once helped me broker a school lobby fight regarding a drag queen and proper poster design for the school carnival. And even though one of the people in that fight was one of his best friends, he worked diplomacy like a pro.

The irony of that mean soccer dad situation was that no one could see the other side’s point of view. I was too goofy and out of it with grief to realize that I was wrong or even apologize. And maybe the mean dads just had a bad loss, maybe someone’s kid got hurt, maybe they had dealt with their own mean dad from another team.

We say that there is no right or correct way to grieve. But one good way to grieve may be to try and model the behaviors that you love in the person that is gone.

I will try to do better. In memory of my friend. And for who I want to be.

Disrupt This Tech: 13 Apps for SF Parents That May or May Not Exist (With a Last-Minute SF Giants Addition!)

Some of these apps might actually be out there, or at least in beta. I haven’t had time to do the research because I’m too busy teaching my toddler how to identify the best single-origin coffees by flavor profiles.

If these apps don’t exist already and you are looking for a new idea for a start-up, go ahead and grab one of these bad boys and throw it into your business plan. I’m just gonna open source it.

An app to help us get around when Giants fans act like this.

So here you go. A few ideas for apps that would serve San Francisco parents well:

1. A public school lottery app.
2. An app that tells you the ratio of dog shit to grass on a soccer field or grassy park.
3. A “where is a goddamn changing table around here or do I have to do this deed in the stroller or back of the car again?” app.
4. Which Restaurants Have Highchairs App. Bonus points for Which Restaurants Have Highchairs That are Not Broken App.
5. An app that tells me: “Where can I breastfeed and not be stared at by confused 24 year olds or judged by crotchety 60 year olds?”
6. Fog Free Playground App. Works best in the summer.
7. An app that lets parents order organic, free-range, local, artisanal, vegan, gluten-free lunches to their kid’s Waldorf preschool. (Scratch that. I feel certain that this one must be out there by now.)
8. Teach my adolescent son to groom his budding hipster facial hair app.
9. An app that tells me how long the line is at BiRite Ice Cream vs. Mitchells vs. Humphry Slocombe.
10. Measure the ratio of pot smoke to fresh air in Dolores Park or Duboce Park on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
11. An app that tells me how gifted and/or special and/or high-needs my child is and whether or not that warrants special school considerations kicking into place (see #1).
12. Where is the nearest preschool playgroup that offers Mandarin immersion and/or succulent gardening and/or knitting?
13. Apps that teach kids to write business plans for their startup apps.

Last minute World Series addition: An app that helps you plan where you can celebrate the Giants winning the World Series while avoiding all the douches who set fire to the City and smash things. (This app definitely needs to be created soon…because you KNOW the Giants are going to win again! Yay Giants!)

Only in SF Parenting: Part 3 for Kid #3

A couple of years ago I got on a kick of writing about “Only in San Francisco” parenting moments.

Here is the latest version.

Your kid’s middle school has a fundraiser at Moby Dick’s bar in the Castro, complete with Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence making a guest appearance.

The Sisters also come hang out as guest judges at the elementary school DogFest fundraiser.

The odd confluence of Easter and 4/20 presents a major parenting conundrum where you must intentionally keep the kids from having an egg hunt in several local parks because the parks are full of high times celebrants wearing their classy marijuana-print leggings. (And smoking their classy marijuana leaves.)

Moooomm! The Pacific Ocean is so boring! Do we have to go agiiiin?

The day after 4/20 the checker at Trader Joe’s looks like he enjoyed a few too many celebratory Easter brownies.

An intense mom laps you going into yoga class, cuts in front of you, and hurls her matt down into your spot. She’s angry because she just had a fight with her daughter in the hall outside of class about how the daughter won’t get into Stanford if she doesn’t go to Lowell High School. The daughter looks around ten.

When you tell your friends you are expecting a third baby the first thing they ask is “will it overlap in elementary school with your big kids so you don’t have to do the lottery again?” This is before they say congratulations or ask you how you will fit all your kids into your tiny two bedroom house.

Your kids’ school carnival features a celebrity emcee who is a famous children’s author. Your kids will geek harder on the children’s author than a special appearance from One Direction.

Last week you had to scurry your kids out of the playground due to worries for their safety. This was not because of the nearby homeless man pushing a cart, nor young kids wearing hoodies. Those guys are safe. You are afraid of the strange high-strung woman peering around the park in her Google Glasses. And you don’t want to get caught in tech-war brawl between Google bus bros and the trust fund artists who like to block their buses.

There is an ongoing raging debate with the 6-year-old over whether a packaging box should go in the compost or recycling. (Correct answer = either.)

You must give a lecture to your jaded children about your land-locked childhood every time they whine about having to go to the boring old beach and gaze at the blah Pacific Ocean again.

The school spring fundraiser sells hoodies. As in jackets. This way all the kids will have brand new warm outerwear that fits for SUMMER. Because it is durn cold here in July and August. Don’t come here during that time and act surprised. Just bring a hoodie.

What else have I forgotten to add? What’s the latest in Only in SF parenting moments?

Trying So Hard To Do Non-Workish Writing and I End Up Getting Emotional Over Napkins

Six years ago I started this blog as a cathartic reaction to feeling overwhelmed and frightened by the byzantine San Francisco public school lottery process. Writing about the process gave me and outlet to (white) whine while I worked through my many complicated feelings about my oldest children crossing the school threshold.

At the center of all my fretting was a sweet little girl who began her elementary school journey at our sweet little kindergarten. She liked school and things were going well enough. Then one day she asked me to pack her a napkin in her lunch.

“Are there napkins at the school?” I said.

“Yes, but I’m too scared to go ask for one.”

Be still my heart. I wanted to give that nervous baby twenty napkins stuffed in every pocket like a protective mama force-field. So the next day I made sure to pack one in her lunch, and I have given her a napkin in her lunch every day since. It’s one of those symbolic parenting things that we like to do and then write sentimental blog posts about.

Today that girl is confident and strong and helps little kids who are timid at her school. I won’t say she’s graceful because she’s not. But she’s still lovely on her awkward edge of adolescence. She’s tall. Almost as tall as me. It’s like hugging a friend. Except I have to remind myself that she’s still a child in so many ways.

And we recently had to do the school lottery thing again, this time to apply for middle school. We got the letter and all is well – we got our first choice school. I relaxed into the relief at surviving yet another school lottery nail-biter and then dove headfirst into the realty that my first baby is about to leave elementary school behind.

The Sunday evening after we got the middle school letter I packed lunches to get ahead for the next morning.  I grabbed a napkin out of habit to put in the girls’ lunch boxes. And the memory of that 5-year-old, too scared to get a napkin, made it hard for me to breathe for a good ten seconds. Before I knew what was happening, big juicy tears trailed my cheeks.

Six years in a flash. And this coming fall she will walk down the hill from her elementary school with the Big Kids to middle school. And push me away. And text. And have crushes. And gossip. And become elated. And become devastated. And want to dye her hair or shave it off. And wear clothes that are too revealing or that hide her developing body. And be a slob. And keep secrets. And do her own thing. And make her own lunch. And find her own damn napkins.

I will miss her being a part of the elementary school community – where our family will be for many years due to our gaggle of kids. I am grateful for kind teachers who inspire, for adult friends I have fallen in love with, and for many children who fill my heart like little nieces and nephews.

Sure, I still have my middle baby girl. Sure I still have an infant baby. I’m not done with elementary school years by a long shot. But there’s something primal in seeing that first kid move on. And knowing that she’s big enough and wise enough to get her own napkin in middle school.

shredded wheat hair: 11 things i thought were gone for good

My hair. On a good day.

One year ago I got the biggest (and best) bombshell of my life with a surprise pregnancy.

You know that old saying about trying to make plans and God having a good long laugh at your sad sack expense? Well, that’s sorta what happened to us. Except we got the last laugh, because out of the bombshell came a sweet little guy. And our family is already more complete in ways we never knew that it wasn’t. If that makes any sense whatsoever.  

(If it doesn’t, I’m sorry. I slept for four hours last night and I’m on my eighth latte.)

With the arrival of said sweet little guy, I now find myself often walking a fog of déjà vu-ness, as I repeat certain baby experiences that I thought were behind me for good.

Here are a some examples:

1. Making a crucial game time decision in the precious moments that I have in the shower each day (or every few days, but who’s counting?) on what deserves the most attention. Should I hack through the tropical rainforest on my legs or wash the ragged wad of shredded wheat on my head?

2. Getting all worked up over the purchase of a tricked out new stroller that has enough gadgets and features to put my hybrid car to shame. These things have seriously evolved since my I hauled my now-10-year-old around as a baby in a $20 beater from Target.

3. Riding the wave of dignity, pride, and embarrassment as I fumble with public breastfeeding.

4. Suffering engorged breasts in the early morning hours. Ouch!

5. Feeling joyful about engorged breasts during the early morning hours because it means baby has slept through one or more feedings. Remember those days, parents of big kids?

6. Mopping up nuclear poop explosions that cause me and the kid to both need an emergency shampoo (see #1).

7. Singing lyrics to Hall and Oates or the Eagles at the top of my lungs while parallel parking on Valencia Street because the baby is screaming REALLY loud and will only chill the eff out to certain melodies.

8. Freaking out about getting work done while baby is asleep. And once he goes down it’s like I’m on amphetamines for two hours. I’m the fastest, most productive worker in the continental U.S. during nap time, yo.

9. Sitting up all night while a sick baby sleeps on my chest. (Sad face.)

10. Fighting the nearly overwhelming urge to tell a meddling older woman where to shove it when she scolds me for taking my baby out without a hat. Settling for the evil eye and lots of righteous indignation.

11. Feeling so mushy gushy with love that I can’t even watch this video without my mascara running down my cheeks. Because it’s funny and because it’s precious and because I love little babies. Even other people’s babies get my hormones all whackadoodle these days.

I could go on and on but the baby is asleep and I have to work. Or wash my hair.

my tiny yogini

Two times a week (and sometimes three if I’m lucky) I truck myself and my cute little baby out to a mommy-baby yoga class. The trip is a refresher on the challenges of doing things with a little person in tow.

Sometimes I wake him up from a nap. Sometimes I force him to nurse before I drive 20 minutes from my Sunset house to the Mission neighborhood and my favorite yoga studio. When I get there I circle several blocks looking for free parking while the baby screams. (He hates the car.) I unload the carseat full of baby, put it in the stroller, drag out a diaper bag, yoga bag, and my purse. Then we hoof it over to class.

These logistics are actually not a big deal because I love what happens in the hour and a half of mommy-baby yoga.

The asanas are more for me than the baby. We mostly do stuff that post-partum women give a damn about: abs, back, hips, pelvic floor. With a wee bit of baby stretching at the end.

But it is the only 1.5 hours of my day that require me to be present and centered and focused on only one thing. And I get to share that with my baby.

These are the only hours of my week with: No TV. No work. No internet. No big sisters. No playdates, playgroup, carpools, soccer practice, soccer games, dance classes, girl scouts, guitar lessons, piano lessons, homework, music practice, reading time, art projects, birthday parties, church, sleepovers, cooking, or cleaning.

We can’t use our phones except to take a cute picture. We focus on our breath, our bodies, and our babies. And it gives me just enough juice to power through the rest of the day.

I listen to new moms chat with each other about how to best get their babies to sleep through the night or latch on properly. And for once I get to be the elder stateswoman as they turn to me and ask questions from my experience. I truly know nothing more than they do, but it is fun to mouth off and tell funny stories about when my big kids were babes.

The entire experience is precious and lovely and in the moment, as I move and sweat and make faces at my baby while doing a downward dog.

Chaturanga offers a chance to zerbert my tiny yogini’s sweet tummy. I wiggle my fingers and wave hello from Warrior Two. I lift my head from Child’s Pose and sniff his soft cheeks, shiny and sparkly from my lip gloss kisses. He grins with joy and I catch a glimpse of the teenager he will be, when the kisses will come from someone else. I know that this time goes by fast and that I am often pulled in five directions as I attempt to give all of my kids (plus a husband) what they need while working and taking care of domesticities.

Which is why I’m grateful for that hour and half of mommy-baby yoga.

how to talk to a pregnant woman: a refresher for douchebags

Lists like this have been shared a thousand times by a thousand women.

But for the love of Ganesh, no one seems to be listening! My poor husband gets an annoying lecture from me every night as I waddle (I mean pace) the floor after some random comment nearly left me in tears.

Is this what I look like, y’all? Tell me! I can handle it. No wait! Don’t!

After hearing for the tenth time that day that I am an enormous pregnant elephant (which I don’t think I am, by the way), I start to lose it.

I will yell at my husband, “I don’t look that big, do I?” Then I grab him on a very sensitive place (the ear, you perverts,) and twist very hard and repeat, “Do I? DO I???!” until he collapses on the floor and smiles up at me and lovingly tells me I’m beautiful.

Since no one pays attention to the basic rules of humanity regarding pregnant woman, I’m going to be derivative and unoriginal and remind you douchebags of a few guidelines for common courtesy regarding the expectant mother.

If you already know these things, please don’t feel insulted. You are not a douchebag. You are lovely and I am not talking to you.

Douchebags, please read on.

DON’T

Ask a pregnant woman if she is having twins. If she is having twins, she’ll tell you. Because she is going to be utterly freaked out that she is carrying twins. She is probably walking through life announcing, “Yes, it’s twins!” to anyone who gives her belly an uncomfortable second glance. My sister had twins so I sorta know about this stuff a little bit.

Tell her she looks like she’s going to have the baby tomorrow. What if she’s just big lady? What if she’s on her third child (ahem) and her abs are just all stretched out and disgusting and you are rubbing it in? Don’t you feel terrible now?

Tell her that her baby looks too small. Along these same lines, some women are small. Some families make small babies. What if she’s nervous about low birth weight? Again, don’t you feel terrible now?

Touch her, for chrissakes. I hate to rattle the bedrock of the hetero porn industry, but women are not yours for the touching. Even if they stick out a little. A pregnant belly is not a “touch me” sign. It is personal and private, and imagine if a stranger walked up to you and put their hand flat against your belly button. Gross.

The lower belly is also dangerously close to the pubic area. My friend, April, said, “It’s almost like someone is trying to touch your vagina.” She’s right.

I’m totally cool with my friends wanting to lay hands on the belly, but then again, those people are polite enough to ask first.

DO

Ask open-ended questions. How are you feeling? How’s it going? When is the baby due? You get the idea? But, please, please, please know for a fact that the woman is actually pregnant before getting into details about gestation length.  And (back to the Dont’s. Sorry.) DON’T ASK HER IF SHE IS PREGNANT!!! If you are not sure then just be quiet for five minutes until you get distracted by a squirrel or something.

Tell her she looks great. Compliment whatever feels right according to your relationship. Tell her hair is shiny and bouncy or her skin is glowing and radient or (if appropriate) her boobs look huge and terrific. Based on my experience, pregnant women feel hideous at least 50% of the time, so the tiniest scrap of kindness you can manage to throw her way will make her day and make you feel like a million bucks for making her day. If she looks like a god-awful sack of turds then keep your mouth shut, because when is it ever okay to insult any human being for any reason?

I’ll stop here and leave you with my favorite douchebag moment that recently came flooding back to me: When I was pregnant with my first child, a man stood next to me, looked at another woman and said, “Now there’s a woman who hasn’t let pregnancy ruin her body.”

Just in case you were wondering, please don’t say that either.

You guys want to add anything else? What else should you say or not say to an expectant mama?

like you need another reason to vote

Dig if you will a picture.

Me, blabbing on and on to my Big Girl, who is zoning out over her latest book and only looking up occasionally to pretend to listen to my rant.

“You need to appreciate all the hard work it took for women to get to vote. You need to be grateful for the sacrifices that women made for girls like you. Women couldn’t even vote until the 20^th amendment!” I am lecturing so hard that even I wonder if there may be a quiz later.

Pause. “Oops.”

I put down the wine.

“I mean 19^th amendment.” Pause. Big Girl’s eyes shift from the book to my wine glass.

“Yea,” I say. “The 20^th amendment was alcohol.” Pause. “I think.”

Some sound logic, yes?

I may have been ranting and raving in a manner that provoked typical eye-rolling from my precocious kid, but my intention rang true.  As a mother of young daughters, I find that elections represent something big and powerful in my parenting.

When I talk to our kids about the importance of being an informed and active citizen and all of that good stuff, I tend to latch on to something very immediate to me as a mother of daughters: The women who fought and suffered so that we could vote in the United States.

This conversation lights a fire under my earnest feminist ass faster than an Indigo Girls CD from the 90s. I’ve been thinking a lot about what kind of feminist legacy I want to share with my daughters. And what kind of civic-minded, engaged woman I want to be as a role model.

“Here. Read this.” I thrust a crusty old book called A Women’s History of the World at the Big Girl. “You should know this stuff.” She flips through the chapter on forced rape as part of historical warfare and I grab the book back. “Um, wait!”

So I decide to start small. I tell her about the American suffragists. And what they went through.

Like early suffragist heroes, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, well-to-do ladies of means.  They were socially ostracized and ridiculed and their ideas were dismissed by the majority of Americans. They died without ever seeing the results of their lifetime of work.

Alice Paul. In jail. For me and my daughters. Wow.

Later activist were shouted at, jeered at, taunted, threatened. I use the word “bullied” in conversation, which carries a heavy load to a 9-year-old with an unusually acute social conscience.  And sometimes the consequences for the suffragists went beyond social shunning.

For example, Lucy Burns went on a hunger strike in jail. She was treated brutally and refused medical attention.  She was tortured with her arms handcuffed above her head and was eventually held down by five people while feeding tubes were shoved up her nostrils.

Alice Paul was placed in solitary confinement and also force-fed through a tube.

And who were the other nameless women in history who were beaten at the hands of their husbands and fathers for daring to suggest that women have a voice at the polls? Who else was hurt or even killed for being brave enough to demand a voice in our society?

Today so many of us take it for granted. We are lazy and complacent. We think that our vote doesn’t matter. We disrespect those who suffered for our rights.

The women’s suffrage movement was not without its flaws. It excluded women of color, for starters. But I still have to respect what these brave fighters were willing to go through so that daughters and granddaughters and eventually women of all races and backgrounds could vote.

This year’s election has certainly brought the heat for those of us who value reproductive freedom and the power over our own bodies. But even without these issues, I feel an increased sense of urgency in modeling good citizen behavior for my girls. I’m going to vote because I can. Because I am blessed to live in a place and time where no one will beat me or rape me or lock me in jail or torture me for daring to have a voice. And I vote to honor and respect those women in other parts of the world today who do not live these same freedoms.

I’m voting. And I’m raising my glass of wine to the 19^th Amendment. Or is it the 20^th?

Ok, I know these aren’t the original suffragists, but look at how badass they are!

i am a public school parent and i won’t back down (sorry maggie!)

Last night I went to a media screening of the new film Won’t Back Down, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Viola Davis with Holly Hunter.

I’ll get right to the point, y’all.

I love you anyway, Maggie!

Here are some things that are good about this film:

The protagonists are charming and believable. (With the exception of the obligatory love-interest male teacher who was allegedly from Texas yet had a NY accent. Not believable.)

The story centers around two mothers who are both in challenging situations and who are willing to risk it all to help their children have a better life. I get that. I understood the characters’ motivations and I rooted for them to succeed.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is her usual adorable, dimply-cheeked self as the working-class single mom with the heart of gold. She fights the good fight to help her dyslexic daughter. Maggie is scrappy and charming and the character is apparently so poor that she can’t afford shirts big enough to cover her cute little belly button. She also manages to keep her clothes on for the entire movie–which probably falls more into the category of things that are less good about this film now that I think about it.

Viola Davis portrays a depressed public school teacher and a parent facing her own demons. She is terrific in this role, and I enjoyed seeing the grace and dignity that we have come to expect from this talented actor. She delivers an earnest scoop of hope to a bummer public school, and, yes, she also corners the market on the whole heart-of-gold thing.

Holly Hunter is a jaded union leader. Did I mention that under her tough exterior she has a heart of gold?

I love the actors. I love the acting. (Minus the dude who couldn’t fake a Texas accent to save his life.) This is your typical feel-good, uplifting story about a plucky band of misfits who work their asses off and make positive changes in the lives of children.

Now, (deep breath), here are some things that are not good about this film:

The plucky band of misfits inflict their positive change by invoking the “Parent Trigger Law,” which allows parents to take over failing public schools and turn them into charter schools. They essentially bust up the teachers union and corporatize a public institution. The film hits you in the face (and slaps you on the back of the head and punches you in the gut and kicks you in the ass really, really hard with a boot) with vehement anti-public school propaganda.

As a public school advocate and self-avowed annoying PTA lady, I had to pause several times during the film to pick my jaw up off the ground in disbelief. I saw this film the evening before helping to launch a major fundraising campaign at my children’s PUBLIC school. I saw this film after spending a day emailing and tweeting around with other PUBLIC school volunteers about ways to get California parents to vote in favor of PUBLIC education this November.

I saw this film with an open mind and what I saw shocked me.

The political agenda of Won’t Back Down is as naked and laid-out as Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary: Public schools are terrible. The only way to make them better is to take them over and turn them into charter schools. Oh and teachers unions are evil, greedy, spawn-of-Voldemort’s-demon-seed bastards. The end.

I watched scene after scene of tacky, cheating, cruel, lying, selfish teachers in the union. I watched a rally where the pro-charter school advocates wore green (representing growth and hope in case you went to public school and don’t get symbolism) and the pro-public school advocates wore red (the color of blood and Satan, of course).

I watched the school go from drab to fab, as grey and brown clothing and classrooms magically transformed into double-rainbows drenched in sunshine and Skittles. This was only after the poor children were released from the throat-crushing death grip of the Darth Vader teachers union.

My children’s PUBLIC school (which is awesome by the way) was on the district closure list a few years ago. And what did the parents do? Did they try to take over the school and turn it into a charter school and force out all the teachers who stayed with the union? No, silly.

They wrote a grant and built a new playground. They created a tutoring program. They started creative and aggressive fundraising programs like DogFest to help bridge the gap between public school funding and unmet public school needs. They volunteered in classrooms and on the playground and in the lunchroom. They went to PTA meetings and School Site Council meetings. They started a parent Coffee Klatch to create community. They were a plucky band of misfits, by golly!

Some even went as far as forming legislative advocacy organizations to make a difference in the lives of children at the state and national level.

I’m not anti-charter school. I’m not anti-private school. I’m not anti-anything. But this movie distilled a complicated issue into simplistic, manipulative platitudes to the point that the conspiracy theorist in me wondered who the hell bankrolled the entire thing.

So….a friend of mine helped me do a little research and we came up with some nifty insights. Such as the fact that this film is funded by Walden Media, which is owned by  Philip Anschutz, a right wing leader whose foundation has campaigned against such things as same-sex marriage and single parents. He is also part of the conservative movement that promotes school “choice” and privatization and corporatization of public schools. This film is also produced by Rupert Murdoch of Fox News fame.

Ah hah! The plucky band of misfits has quite the corporate backer!

I’m not saying don’t see this movie. Go right ahead. But be ready to have an informed conversation after the credits roll. And try to focus on Maggie’s dimples if you get too angry. They are just adorable!

in a weird way this sort of made my day

The other day I was head sucker, I mean counselor, on duty at Mom Camp. We were at the California Academy of Sciences, fooling around, waiting to go up on the neato living roof and blind the crap out of our eyes trying to see the Transit of Venus by pushing the tourists wearing $65 San Francisco fleeces out of our way.

It was a warm June day, by San Francisco standards. The kids were in shorts. I actually carried my hoodie in my giant mom-purse instead of burrowing inside of its warm hoodiness. The tourists didn’t need the fleeces. But I understand why they were chilly. I’m from Texas where the temperature is fifty degrees warmer so I get it.

this is how it’s done in the SF on warm days…

I know I digress, but it’s okay. The relative warmness of the day is essential to this story.

Since it was a delightfully balmy 62 degree day, I forced the kids to stop gawking at all of the crusty old taxidermified animals, and I put them outside to tear it up in the sunshine. We had some lunch. Chilled out a little with some nice kid chatter: “what would happen if a real earthquake happened while we were in the fake earthquake exhibit?” and “did you know that my friend was on the toilet during an earthquake and the toilet broke?”

The little girls soon ran off to play “Family” by climbing around on the sea lion sculptures and hollering at each other over who gets to be the big sister first.

The big kids dutifully sprayed on some sunscreen to protect their translucent Northern California flesh from the rigors of a rare sunny day. They launched into the sort of creative free fall that earnest progressive white parents lust over: a complicated plot involving submarines and being stranded on an island and earthquakes and flesh-eating crabs. Totally awesome.

I lurked near the older children, eavesdropping and playing with my phone, wishing I had remembered to bring a Chelsea Handler book or at least a douchey magazine. But I still felt at peace. The kids were happy. Venus was about to slither her way across the face of Mr. Sun. The warm air felt good on my own translucent skin. And it was actually a nice day in the summer in San Francisco for crying out loud. I smiled into the sky and closed my eyes for a minute.

And then a shadow fell across me.

I opened my eyes to see a woman in a long skirt with wild curly hair (I’ll admit, not unlike my own shredded wheat-ish mess) standing in front of me and one of the big girls in my group. A limp ergo baby carrier hung from the woman’s waist.

She stared at the big girl and back at me, a crooked, expectant smile parting her nude lips.

“I can still smell that sunscreen,” she said directly to the big girl. Then the woman turned and cocked her head at me, looking for my reaction.

Still in my stupid haze of sunny day joy, I nodded my head and smiled, thinking that the hippie mom was just making small talk.

Hippie Mom hovered over us like she was waiting for something. I kept grinning like a geek. For some reason I felt like saying, “Far out.”

“It was very intense,” she finally said. And folded her arms and scowled at the ten-year-old child to let us know she meant business about the scent of the sunscreen.

It suddenly dawned on me that the woman had gone out of her way, crossing the open yard outside the museum, to fuss at a little girl about chemical sensitivity. Seriously? Seriously.

I sat up straight and pondered how to respond to this. A few choice words crossed my mind: Like asking her if the Tibetian prayer flags outside her house in Berkeley were what led her to try and shame a little girl. Like does she go about her whole life marching up to strangers in judgment? Like who the hell does she think she is?

Then I remembered being a new mom, full of dogmatic indignation that everyone else was doing this whole parenting thing wrong and the even more overwhelming certainty that I was for sure doing this whole parenting thing wrong more than they were. But did I ever march up to a stranger and tell her that her sunscreen offended me? Did I ever hover over a little girl, waiting for an acknowledgment of my overblown sense of righteousness? I don’t think I did, but I’m sure I was a total asshole in some other way.

So I took a deep breath, put on my best fake, I mean compassionate, smile and looked up at the judgmental mommy with the hairy armpits.

“I’m sorry it bothered you,” I said and I forced some dimples. But behind my ginormous sunglasses my eyes squinted up in a glare. And fuck off, they secretly added.

“Thank you,” she gave an earnest nod. “I hope the sunscreen works for you.” She spun around and sang after her toddler, a child with a traditional male name but who wore an all-pink outfit and had longish hair. I’ll let the cliché rest there.

I turned to face the child I was with who had just been targeted by the Hippie Mom’s virtue. Was she upset?

The girl and I faced each other and both of us busted up laughing. I’m sure Hippie Mom heard it but I don’t care.

“Ready to go see the Transit of Venus?” I asked.

“Uh-huh!” she giggled. And a sweet little bond passed between us.

I nodded and shook out my own mess of windblown hair. “Far out.”