When I lived in LA, I commuted from near downtown to The Valley. I arrived to school early to get all my prep done and tried to leave before 4:25 to beat the traffic. My commute on the 101 took 20 minutes in the morning, driving 90, and closer to 45 minutes driving home with my left leg on the clutch the whole time. If it was a busy day and I didn't leave until 5, that homeward bound time could easily double. However, Fridays were another story. Just as earthquakes are not like hurricanes and you cannot outrun them, Friday night rush hour in The Valley starts before noon. It cannot be beaten.
Rather than suffer all that time in a car without a radio (a story for later) and risk having a left gluteus maximus that was significantly more toned than my right, I choose to wait it out. The Valley is actually a nice place to spend your Friday night. Ventura Blvd. is a great shopping location; they have a Pinkberry and a Trader Joes and a book store made out of an old movie theater (sound familiar?). The Valley is culturally a lot like Houston, and in this scenario, Ventura Blvd. would be the Rice Village. Yes, Ventura Blvd. can boast that it was part of The Camino Real, but nobody's comparing The Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, either. (Oh, man, the way this is going, I might not get such a warn welcome upon my return to Texas.) I worked hard all week and I liked to treat myself to a Pinkberry on Friday. They are a little overpriced, but its good fro-yo and it comes with a lot of fruit, so you feel pretty good afterward, not that bloated ice cream feeling, ugg.
I would be standing there feeling gross and dirty in my work clothes and waiting behind, like, a dozen private school kids. It was nice that they were not the public school kids that I taught all day, so I didn't know any of them. But still, how much does one have to spend on a dessert before the teenagers are priced out? In The Valley, on a public school teachers salary, I would have been tapped out first. That knowledge kind of made me resent these children. But I didn't resent them too much, because I still remembered being a teenager living in my parents' income bracket and not my own. I remember one of my art teachers complaining about the cars my peers drove and how much nicer they were than her car. Ultimately, watching these teenagers, who I could relate to so much more than my students, I enjoyed my frozen treat and my memories of high school.
Earlier this year, Barack Obama was on The Tonight Show and he told a story about being flown in a military helicopter over the Lincoln Memorial on his was somewhere. He was enjoying the view and the experience and his daughter looked over, not out the window, but at the candy dish in front of her and asked, "Are these Starburst? Can I have one of these?" My mother laughed, but said that you can't expect kids to appreciate more than they know. Then she said it was just like when she told us about something specific in her childhood. Her childhood qualms were quite bigger than the price differential of ice cream, and apparently, my sister and I didn't relate. My mother's childhood is to my childhood as Barack's childhood is to his daughters? Not quite, my childhood is the only one that could be considered normal there, but that was the point my mother was implying. That, and if you are the adult you shouldn't get too upset when your children don't appreciate the things that they take for granted. At least, I think that was her point.
I love going out to breakfast. There are a few places near me that I especially like: Perch, where they serve really good egg sandwiches and Salmon Benedict, and Dizzies, where they put really good mini muffins and fruit butter on your table before you order. Both places are very kid friendly, and I always look around and wonder, "Who are these spoiled kids?" Last time I was at Dizzy's the table next to us had two adults and four children. The children were bad, and I later told Frank that people with that many bad children should just stay at home and feed them mac and cheese, with the money they save on the food they could afford to hire a sitter. Maybe I just don't understand how hard it is to get a sitter in the Slope. Once I heard an eight year old at Dizzy's use the phrase "pallet cleanser." Perch is a full on bar at night, but on weekdays they have a story time and puppet shows. Both are also places that I can justify paying a little more to eat breakfast once a week because I bought disposable dixie to-go cups and make coffee at home every day.
Last night I read the first half of Tori Spelling's book. (I'll see your summer movie and raise you a beach read). Half way through, her thesis seems to be that while her parents did give her a snow day in LA and a room of Madame Alexander dolls, they did not give her the more important things in life, like the skill set needed to leave bad boyfriends. I thought of this this morning when I was eating my smoked salmon at Perch and a man rolled his two year old daughter in in a stroller that retails for more than my last car. The girl was unhappy, to say the least. She was throwing her head back and screaming, "I want to go to Dizzy's." The waitresses were looking over and the dad kept saying, "Shush!" So, yeah, I was a little bit jealous of this little girl who gets pushed around to breakfast at finer diners, but then I thought that to her, she might as well be trying to pick between Cheerios and Shredded Wheat.
