The New Rules

So at what point does one get to check out from, well, new stuff? When does one get to say, no more, sorry, enough already, brain's tired, spirit's sapped, just can't any longer?

I had a disastrous class on Friday with a lecture I'd given with great success a couple times before--but that's never a guarantee. The students change, the class time changes, I change. And technologies change. Part of this lecture involves a film clip (from Mary Poppins--never let it be said that I do not challenge my students) and my copy is on VHS. Yes, a videocassette. But we no longer have a VCR at home so I could not cue up the scene in advance and my effort to do so in class set into motion an entire series of technological mishaps, all with the students glaring at me in obvious contempt. Because of course the scene is on Youtube and of course one can embed the scene in one's Powerpoint--if one is not me, that is. Tired old me with Mary Poppins in its gargantuan plastic rectangle, a relic of my children's childhoods.

But you know, if the problem were confined to technology, I could cope. You 're mystified, you fail, you whine and moan, and then you go find someone young who shows you how. I get that. Plus it's every generation's right to immiserate the last with new technology. I get that too.

It's the new rules that are driving me nuts.

Take the Matchy-Matchy Rule. I went home in July for a wedding and accompanied my 14-year-old niece as she hunted for shoes to wear with her silver-and-black dress. I suggested a silver-and-black pair of heels and she shot me a look somewhere between sorrow and pity: "I don't want to be Matchy-Matchy," she explained. Oh. Right. I nod like I have a clue but inside I'm asking, "Wait, when did matching become a problem? Who changed the rules? Why wasn't I notified?" And now it's a Sunday morning in August and I am wearing a new black-and-white polka-dotted sundress and I have a pair of adorable black-and-white polka-dotted earrings. . .  but Hugh says no, too Matchy-Matchy. Well, dang.

Or then there's the Trim-Your-Bush Rule. Keith and I went to see Your Sister's Sister (a terrific film, by the way) and in one hilarious scene, Rosemarie DeWitt's character reveals that her half-sister (played by Emily Blunt) once came home from a date all embarrassed because the guy had laughed at the bulge in her underwear created by her pubic hair: "She didn't know she was supposed to trim her bush!" And the Emily Blunt character is cringing and everyone in the theater is roaring and I'm laughing too but I'm also thinking, "Well, damn, so you are supposed to do that." Was this always a rule that somehow Mom forgot to inculcate? Or is it a new rule and once again, I missed the memo?

Where does one pick up these memos? When are they delivered? And really, when is it ok just to chuck them in the trash and trip along unawares, earrings matchy-matching one's sundress, bush pooching out from one's underwear, videocassette of Mary Poppins firmly in hand?