"The Daily Show" Is the New New York Times

I am going to admit something REALLY embarrassing here. Ack, I can hardly type the words! Okay, here it goes:

I get 85% of my news from The Daily Show, 10% from my search engine's homepage, 4% from Perez Hilton, and 1% from local TV news. There, I admitted it!

I'm not kidding about this. A good example is this whole Egypt brouhaha. I saw a teaser about it on the 10 p.m. news last night when I was tuning in for the sole purpose of finding out when the next f-in' blizzard is going to come and ruin my day.

Hmm, Egypt...that's a new player in the ongoing international news loop, I thought. Then I saw something else about it on AOL or Google, or wherever. Huh.

Then I went on Facebook (c'mon, you knew it was only a matter of time) and saw that The Daily Show posted a link to a segment they did on the Egypt situation last night. One click, eight minutes of my time, and wham-o!, I was updated on the whole Egypt deal-io.

Okay, not really. Because I'm not an idiot: I realize that protests, political unrest, election controversies, coups, etc., cannot be summed up or adequately understood in an eight-minute news bite. These events are complicated and nuanced, and acquiring a full understanding of what's going on requires extensive reading about history, economics, race relations, politics, and more.

But who has the time and energy for that?

The worst part about all this is that at one time, a long time ago, I was actually passionate and informed about "International Relations" (as "World Politics" was confusingly called back then). I graduated from an excellent university with a minor in I.R. and wrote papers about U.S.-Soviet détente, Sunni-Shiite relations, and Middle East oil. I even applied to (and got rejected by) Georgetown's School of Foreign Service. I Marched on Washington! I was political! I cared!

Now, the most significant politics in my life are the ones I have to deal with while serving on the Board of my kids' preschool.

Tattoo You

I think it's pretty awesome that Gen X turned getting tattooed from a weird and fringe activity into something mainstream. Back in the 90s, millions of post-collegiate 20-somethings got themselves inked. The girls either got something cute (dolphin, butterfly) on their ankle or something abstract on their lower back. (This is often referred to as a "tramp stamp"--a name I hate for something I still think is cool and sexy.)  The guys often chose tribal-looking bands around their biceps or calves.

I myself went with a small sun on my shoulder blade. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision... and no, I wasn't drunk. I went to my friend Jen's apartment one Friday night and we got talking about tattoos. Turns out both of us had wanted one for ages. So the next day, we met up at a tattoo place on Ludlow Street and did the deed. It was a summer Saturday afternoon--I got the sun, she got a butterfly--and afterward we went to The Hat (El Sombrero) for margaritas to celebrate. It was one of those perfect It's-the-summer-and-I'm-young-and-living-in-Manhattan-and-life-is-great days. Ah, bliss.

Fast-forward 15 years...and lots of these got-tattooed-in-their-twenties folks are now parents. Every summer, it cracks me up to see the moms sitting around the edge of the town's baby pool, their wild tattoos on display as they supervise their frolicking babies. I realize not everyone agrees with me here, but I think the moms look cute with their slightly stretched-out roses, fleur-de-lis, and dragonflies. (WARNING: If you plan on ever having kids in the future, please carefully choose the location of your tattoo, e.g. abdomen=bad.)

Occasionally, I come across a person who did more than just dabble in the tattoo arts back in the day. I've seen a couple of dads at the pool with multiple tattoos scattered over their arms, backs, and chests; one guy even has the tattooed sleeve thing going on.

A heavily tattooed mom, however, is a much rarer thing (at least it is in Westchester).

Picture this on her neck.

But today I saw her: Late thirties or early forties, three sons, dirty blonde hair, thin, tired-looking, no makeup...and numerous tats, including an intricate spider web that covers THE ENTIRE FRONT OF HER NECK. She also has three star tats scattered behind each ear, a HUGE filled-in heart covering the nape of her neck, and the requisite lower-back abstract. Who knows what additional ink she's hiding under her clothes.

Whenever I see her--usually at the kids' indoor gym we frequent--I have to stifle a gasp, so shocking is her appearance in our relatively traditional suburban town.

OMG, WHAT IS HER STORY? I wonder every time I see her. Because you know there's a good yarn behind her tats. How'd she end up a stay-at-home mom living in Westchester? Maybe she's a Dominatrix on the side? There's  gotta be something juicy there, and I really want to know.

I wish she seemed more approachable because then I'd try to chat her up. Then after the appropriate interval of time, I'd express admiration for her tattoos and maybe get the inside story. But--surprise!--the chick with the neck tats does not seem approachable at all.

So for now I guess I'll just eyeball her when she's not looking and hope I get to know her one day so I can find out the story behind all her ink. Or better yet, get to know someone who already knows her and her tat tale.

Hmmm...but now that I think about it, one of her sons is named Logan, and when she's ready to leave the play-gym she calls out "LOGEY! Time to go, Logey!" How badass can she be, right?

So very disappointing.

Every Mother's Biggest Nightmare

There's a movie out right now--Rabbit Hole, with Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart--about a couple who have lost their child in a car accident. This is a film that I will NEVER, EVER, EVER see. How could you, if you're a parent? Perhaps if you have experienced this most devastating type of loss, seeing this movie could possibly help with recovery or closure or...I don't know. To be honest, I can't imagine that there would be any chance of recovery--or of going on with life at all-- after experiencing such utter horror. I imagine it's the one wound that never heals.

I read a couple of reviews of Rabbit Hole, but even that was difficult. Because my children are still small and somewhat helpless, I feel so, so protective of them. This is the most primal force in my life: to keep my kids safe and happy. So the notion that something horrible could happen to them is what keeps me awake in the middle of the night.

Literally. After reading The New Yorker's review of Rabbit Hole one night, I got into bed and tried to sleep. I couldn't help it, nightmarish visions infected my brain: me driving with the kids in back, the car skidding on ice and crashing, flipping...me regaining consciousness only to find the broken, bloody, lifeless bodies of my two lovelies lying by the side of the road.

No, no, stop! Go away! There is no worse image for a parent.

When these horrible thoughts plague me, I force myself to think about something (anything!) else: how I'm going to decorate the dinosaur cake for my son's birthday party, what I need to pick up at Target, etc. I make myself breathe deeply and slowly until the panic subsides. The toxic visions lurk at the edges of my mind, but I keep pushing them away until I finally fall asleep.

At these times, I'm always reminded of a girl I used to know.

During college, I spent a summer studying in Salamanca, Spain. One weekend, a few of us American girls decided to take the train to Portugal. It was a night train, and if I recall correctly, we had beer, so everyone started opening up and sharing their stories. I think we were talking about divorce, and this one girl was explaining why her parents had split up. I'll never forget her story.

She was six years old, playing in the front yard with her three-year-old brother.

"My mom asked me to keep an eye on him," she said.

But since she was only six, of course her attention wandered. Her father had an errand to run. He got into his pickup truck, backed down the driveway, and ran over his three-year-old son, who was in the driveway and in the truck's blind spot. The boy died.

"I was supposed to be watching him," the girl whispered.

Her parents couldn't deal with the grief--it split them up. And 14 years later, this sweet, pretty 20-year-old was still carrying around an awfully heavy load of guilt. I couldn't even imagine how her parents might still be feeling.

She pops into my mind occasionally--when I read reviews of movies like Rabbit Hole, or when some horrible tragedy is splashed across the newspapers (like the "Tragedy on the Taconic" in 2009)--and I wonder how she's doing.

But mostly I just get scared that it could happen to me.