Home Ec

(image from here.)

In middle school - in eighth grade - I took a Home Economics course.  I don't remember too much about it except a) we made pizza, which I love, & b) I sat near some guys who didn't know I existed & listened to them talk about their lives & watched them torture geeks in the class that I had much more in common with.  It was a strange crash course in being a fourteen-year-old boy in Texas in the early 1980s.  They had tips on bathing, clothing, & girls that I had otherwise no access to.  I kinda wish I took notes but also that I could've asked them follow-up questions without getting mocked or possibly beaten up.

That I was ignored was sort of par for the course for my middle & high school years, although my older brothers did their level best to terrify me & make me think I'd be picked on & abused by the mean kids or the cool kids or whatever.  It's sad that that's what I got out of Home Ec though, because it would've been nice to learn something about cooking.  Or life, really.

Previously on this blog, I've complained - or maybe I've just noted - that my upbringing, including my schooling, left me utterly unprepared for adulthood.  I have friends who share this thought.  As I get older, I realize that there's so much more that could have been taught than cooking.  It's probably impossible to tell children who believe they're immortal & invulnerable that death looms sooner than they think.  That you may have to spend considerable time & resources taking care of aging parents & other relatives.  That you yourself may become a parent.  That there's a chance you'll struggle with mental illness, with addiction, with chronic health issues - or that you'll be close to someone, either a family member or someone you're in a relationship with, who has these challenges.  & maybe someone should spend a little time talking to anyone who might want to own a pet about all that entails, the love & the heartache.

This morning a neighbor who works in the mental health field & I talked about this.  Last year my mother died but she suffered from late-stage Alzheimer's before it happened.  Before that, she had health issues & good ol' fashioned senility, & fortunately my sister took her in & cared for her the last years of her life.  My wife is good about reminding me that we have no children & therefore will not have that option - as she helps her sisters take care of her own aged mother.

Not that I would've taken any of that seriously, the whole idea of life lessons.  But I feel like someone should've tried, with the same imperceptible vigor with which they tried to teach us the passive voice or the age of the earth or the quadratic theorem.  Holy shit, maybe they did.  But no, I think I would've remembered my few friends & I making fun of the utterly square teacher trying to explain to us about aging relatives.

It's no consolation that it was a "learning on the job" moment for my mother when her parents got to that point.  I take no comfort that the previous generation was as ill-prepared for life as I was.  & I have no real way to end this dumb meditation on the problems of time & age.  It just happens to be on my mind.

Shouldn't I be talking about a radio show or something?  Sheesh.