Trampoline Trauma

Once upon a time my parents bought a trampoline. It was a magical fun machine akin to a slip and slide or a zip line. I told the other first graders about it and they were all jealous (except for Amanda who claimed to own a trampoline and a playground and a horse.)

A visual approximation of Amanda's house
Photo Credit

As with all magical fun machines, grown ups felt the need to set down some rules governing its use. No frontflips, no backflips, no shoes, only one person at a time, always use the ladder to exit, and stay inside the circle. The circle was a white line my father spray painted onto the canvas to ensure that his children only jumped within the inner 50% of the trampoline.

When I mention these rules to people they give me quizzical looks. They all had carefree childhood memories of bouncing with friends and getting elbowed in the face by larger relatives. One lady shrugged her shoulders and told me “it’s a good way to lose your baby teeth.” My bubble-wrapped childhood seemed bizarre by comparison.

“Why all the rules?”

Because trampolines are bouncy reapers waiting to claim reckless children. I’m only half joking. Google “trampoline statistics” and you’ll find alarmed parents and pediatricians discussing the tens of thousands of trampoline-related emergency room visits per year.

Yessssss. Send your children to a bouncy death.
Photo Credit

“Did you actually follow these rules?”

My parents fired my favorite babysitter because she let us jump two at a time. I didn’t dare speculate what they’d do to me if they caught me attempting a flip. I didn’t even know how to do a flip. My lack of physical coordination rendered that a moot point.

“Did you even use the trampoline once they’d sucked all the fun out of it?”

Kind of. I’d bounce on it a bit, then I’d get bored and stare up at the sky. Then I’d bounce some more. Then I’d go get a book and read on the trampoline. Since my only option was “jump up and down in a small circle,” I probably spent as much time reading there as I did jumping. Still, the jumping part was fun.

Nets and other trampoline protections weaken the moral fiber of our children
Photo Credit

“Don’t you think your parents were being paranoid?”

Under different circumstances you could call my parents paranoid. But let’s not forget that they’re my parents. Already they’d witnessed me nearly blind myself at a public pool, and then accidentally chop my thumb off (as in no longer attached to my body) at the optometrist’s office. I’ve suffered from self inflicted stab wounds, I once lodged a staple inside my finger, and the less we say about my bike riding instruction the better.  I was the Mozart of unexpected injuries, I was a friggin child prodigy.

But with all these rules, surely I’d be safe from trampoline trauma. Nope. One day I watched my older sister jump off instead of using the ladder to get down, a clear violation of rule number five. I immediately tried it and I landed crooked on my left arm. It hurt, but I expected that. When the pain didn’t wear off I went to bed for a few hours until my Mom noticed that something was wrong and took me to the hospital.

You guessed it. It was my first rule violation and I ended up with a broken arm. So the story has two morals, take your pick.

1. No amount of rules will keep your kids safe so they might as well have fun.

2. There is no such thing as paranoid when you have me for a daughter.

Optimism: we are not going to hell in a hand basket

Technology is ruining our lives. Kids these days and their dang video games. If only life were simpler…

You probably haven’t spoken these exact phrases (because you don’t want to sound like a fretful old hermit knitting sweaters for cats) but odds are that you’ve said something like this. That’s normal, most of us have. Longing for the past is as common as fearing the future.

The sad fact is that the past is a terrible place made slightly less terrible by wealth or status. I don't need to go into the living conditions of the pre-eighteenth century world do I? I'm not just talking about the lack of indoor plumbing. I'm talking about starvation, disease, slavery and all the other normal conditions. Fix that in your mind and jump forward to the much admired 1950's.

Photo Credit

"Those were simpler times." Maybe, but simpler doesn't always mean better. Cancer treatments have certainly increased in their complexity, but I'm not complaining.

"People knew right from wrong back then." No. One generation is not more moral than another. We're the same people put into different situations. Prior generations valued religion, the current generation values equality. Obviously millennials aren't born different or "defective," they just changed with the times the same way baby boomers changed with their times. If a generation of hippies managed to grow up, hold jobs, have children, and live long enough to disapprove of their own children then millenials will doubtless do the same.

Between the lack of modern conveniences, rampant racism, and post-war push to get women out of the workplace and into the kitchen, I'll pass on the 1950's.  They had great diners though, and drive in movies, and some sharp outfits. It wasn't all bad. Very little ever is.

Pessimists out there believe that we're all going to hell in a hand basket and the world is getting gradually worse every year. They believe that the world is more dangerous than ever. Reading The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain cemented an idea that I'd long entertained. It convinced me that everything is actually ok.

Humans have always used the availability heuristic as a tool to determine how dangerous their environment is. If we hear one story about drinking poisoned well water we know that it's not very likely to happen to us. If we heard five stories we think twice before drinking that water. That tool worked well when we got our news through small communities, but now that we can hear thousands of worldwide stories about toxic water we worry. We worry about pesticides in our foods, sexual predators on our playgrounds, and terrorists in our cities.

We worry about our youth and the consequences of technology. We assume that they're more immoral or disrespectful than previous generations. We're afraid that social media will turn them all into illiterate narcissists. We wring our hands and repeat the laments that our ancestors uttered about the Gutenberg press, waltzing, and chess.

We shouldn't. Our world is not only safer than it's ever been, but the "kids these days" are going to be fine.

To illustrate my point I present you with the following links and graphs:

Let's start with all those diseases we don't have to deal with anymore. If you yearn for the good ol’ days you have to take the good with the bad; that includes polio, malaria and all those other illnesses that Americans don’t have to deal with anymore.

Then there's the worldwide decrease in poverty from 43.1%  in 1990 to 20.6% 2010. (There's some debate as to whether the increase is as dramatic as the World Bank claims is it, but nevertheless we have reason to believe that the quality of life is improving.) Many believe that third world countries are a lost cause. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation disagrees. Conditions overall are improving leading to greater worldwide income equality

As for safety concerns, it’s true that violent crime used to be on the rise, but in the past few decades violent crime has gone down, not up.

Speaking of violence, death due to war is way down worldwide.

You are more likely now than ever to die peacefully in your sleep surrounded by your grandchildren or even great grandchildren. If that's not a resounding recommendation of the modern day you can still join the Amish.

As amazing as the present day is, the future promises to be even better.  Look at all the cool stuff that could come our way.

Clean nuclear energy. We already have the technology, all we lack is the widespread implementation.

Lab grown organs, no more waiting on the list of people who need transplants. Also the organs are made from your cells so that your body won't reject it.

Faster than light space travel. I'm not saying that it'll happen soon, I'm just saying that we can't rule it out...it's too amazing to give up on.

Nasa’s imaginative design for a faster than light spaceship

Because we're humans we will misuse this technology and wring our hands and worry about how it's ruining our lives. Then we'll go home, say hello to our family, eat dinner, and go to bed the same way we always have.

Harry Potter Plot Holes: Why We Don't Care

If you’re a Harry Potter fan with an internet connection then the odds are good that you’ve heard of a few plot holes. Some of them are the natural consequence of reading seven books with a broad array of spells, characters, and locations. Some of these problems are a direct result of J.K. Rowling playing fast and loose with the rules. I’ll list a few examples for fun and then I’ll tell you why they don’t matter.

The biggest problems for me  are related to world building. There’s the inconsistency of the magic itself.

“Yet in the Potter books, the costs and limits are too often arbitrary. A patronus charm, for example, is awfully difficult - until Rowling wants a stirring scene in which Harry pulls together an intrepid band of students to Fight the Power, whereupon it becomes simple enough to be taught by an inexperienced fifteen year old.” (McArdle, "Harry Potter: the economics", 2007)

Then there’s the fact that the wizard economy should not work. Magic is pervasive and simple spells can be used for everything. Manual labor is completely unnecessary, the production of goods is limited to a few rare magical items. What do wizards contribute to their tiny economy? Do they really need money?

“The low opportunity cost attached to magic spills over into the thoroughly unbelievable wizard economy. Why are the Weasleys poor? Why would any wizard be? Anything they need, except scarce magical objects, can be obtained by ordering a house elf to do it, or casting a spell, or, in a pinch, making objects like dinner, or a house, assemble themselves. Yet the Weasleys are poor not just by wizard standards, but by ours: they lack things like new clothes and textbooks that should be easily obtainable with a few magic words. Why?” (McArdle, "Harry Potter: the economics", 2007)

With little need for labor, the job options are largely in the service industry or government.

“The private sector is limited to a handful of merchants on Diagon Alley and in Hogsmeade Village, and most of them seem essentially to be government contractors who supply Hogwarts students...Harry himself aspires to become an Auror, a government agent, when he grows up. Do any witches and wizards earn their knuts, sickles and galleons by providing goods or services that add value?” (Cullen,  Harry Potter and the realm of big government, 2005)

For many people these big-picture problems don’t matter because they don’t directly influence the plot. Ok, instead let’s address how we have a “team sport” that is really just about two seekers each trying to catch a ball that’s worth 150 points while the rest of the team works their butts off for every 10 points.  The rule is so awful that the International Quidditch Association changed it so that catching the snitch wins only 30 points.

These guys have the right idea.

Or consider the plot hole that is the Marauder’s Map. It lets you see everyone in the whole school. It’s a plot hole that could’ve solved the mystery of “who’s attacking the school?” in book three.

Or we can discuss the bizarre education system.

“As an independent school, it does not have to follow the National Curriculum closely; however, it is disappointing to note that basic requirements such as English, Mathematics, and Religious Education are all lacking or entirely missing from the school's syllabus. This has had adverse effects on all students, many of whom have never even been taught basic KS1 or 2 literacy.” (Wharmby, "The Board of Education Finally Inspects Hogwarts", 2013)

Even stranger than the lack of reading, writing, and arithmetic is the disconnect from the muggle world. Wizards make up a minuscule percentage of Britain’s population (J.K. Rowling says 3,000 people, some fans insist that you’d need at least 15,000 to support all the details of the story.) So even if all 15,000 wizards lived together in a gated community they’d still be too small to justify their naivety about the outside world. They don’t know muggle history, they never reference muggle pop culture, they live in the UK and they don’t understand soccer. The amish are more connected that wizards are.

Alright, this is the last plot hole I’m going to bring up, but it’s one that could’ve solved everything: the Time-Turner.

How Harry Potter Should Have Ended. AKA Just use the time-turner.

Once you introduce time travel all bets are off. You have to constantly explain why you don’t just go back in time and kill the bad guy. You have to set up clear cut rules about when and how time travel works. J.K. Rowling made a smart move by having all the time turners destroyed in later books so that we couldn’t use that device over and over, but their existence presents an easy solution to every problem. “Why don’t we just create another time-turner and…” You get the idea.

The reason that we shouldn’t care about these plot holes is because it doesn’t interfere with reading experience. Most of us only notice these inconsistencies in retrospect. J.K. Rowling gives us small details like the smell of the potions and the grease on Snape’s hair until we can see the whole potions class. Details like that sell the entire story until the things Rowling never explained become far less important than the rich tapestry of detail she weaves for the reader.

If we find a plot hole in Minority Report, or Inception, or The Matrix, we rejoice because they spend a long time working on internal consistency. Finding plot holes in a film like that can actually ruin the whole story. The Harry Potter series doesn’t really try to convince you that there’s a solid economy, instead it dazzles you with the details of Diagon Alley:

Photo credit

Readers don’t care that the students never learned basic math because we see that they’re doing homework just like us.

Photo Credit

And all of the little “we could’ve ended the series much earlier if Harry had just used X magic instead of doing Y”--that’s irrelevant. Because ultimately this is a story about characters, and those characters are intensely real. They grow over seven years, they make sense, you know them. As Stephen King said “Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity.” You’re different at the end of book seven. You found a character stronger than death. You’ve learned that the world isn’t split into good people and death eaters. You're better able to choose between what is right and what is easy. Thank you J.K. Rowling. It's been magical.

Photo Credit

Children Already Know that Dragons Exist

Remember when you were a kid and an adult would say something like “children are innocent and pure” and you’d think “umm, yeah lady, you just keep thinking that.” Or do you remember when your teacher asked in outrage “Where did you even learn that word?” and you’d think “Gee, I dunno, maybe from every other kid at school.” When you overheard adults talking about violence or tragedy you weren’t shocked because nothing could be worse than the bloody fangs and ripping claws of the creatures in your closet.

Then you grew a little older and real life hard stuff happened all around you. Even if you lived in middle class suburbia you knew about that girl that disappeared from school because of what her weird uncle did to her, or that boy whose dad was shot, or that scrawny kid  with some disease you couldn’t pronounce died. Mostly this happened to strangers, sometimes it happened to friends, sometimes it happened to you.

And you couldn’t tell adults about it. These were the same people who didn’t believe you when you told them about the monsters under the bed. How could you possibly expect them to understand what it means to be wary of the seventh grade?

My point is that children have a secret world and it is easy to forget how scary it is. They’re often jaded about the things that we consider “too adult” for them. Probably because their lives are more adult than they let on.  When kids do bring problems to their parents the reaction is often something like: “Seriously, that kid threatened to push you off the bridge and you didn’t tell someone? What is wrong with you?” Explaining that the other kid was only 50% serious doesn’t really reassure grown ups, either that or they’re too reassured and they decide that you’re just being too sensitive. It’s hard to convey these subtleties to adults, you remember how it was.

When kids can’t go to adults they can always go to stories. Stories don’t judge you, or try to fix you, and the good ones don’t shove a “life lesson” down your throat. They’re simply road maps. Some are realistic maps that tell you that this is what happens when your friend gets pregnant and that is what happens when your mother dies. Other maps are hazier with information about undead horrors and alien invaders--but those maps are arguably even more useful since the conflicts can symbolize whatever you’re going through at the time: your first crush, the pressure to excel, weird stuff your body is doing, or just loneliness.

But sometimes adults want to protect children from stories, precisely because the road maps are too detailed. These adults say “the world is scary enough,” they fret about the nightmares their children will have, the sexual exploration this might inspire, or the violence they might reenact.

They’re not wrong.

If you let your kids read useful books then they’ll have nightmares. They will learn more about their bodies at a younger age than you’d like. They may want to act out the violent things they read. Sometimes the results will be extreme and terrible like in the recent Slender Man Stabbings. It’s much more likely that someone will just get a broken arm or you’ll have to have an uncomfortable conversation about anatomy.

And still I say let them read scary, sexual, sad, violent books. Knowledge is dangerous but the cost of ignorance is higher. Protecting them from difficult stories is like sending them on a road trip through adolescence without a map. Parental guidance, good friends, a moral code--they’re the brakes, the fuel, and the steering wheel, but none of them replace a map.

Obviously we don’t give Steven King novels to third graders but kids are generally good at pacing themselves. I’ve re-read books that I read as a child and thought Wow, how did I miss that bloody dismemberment? I don’t remember that at all. When I was sixteen I picked up a romance novel someone’s mom left in the bathroom. I got two pages in, glanced over the bit about oral sex, and put it down. Kids seek out information that’s relevant to their lives, when something doesn't fit they often just skip it or move on to a new book.

Step in when you have to and tell your kids to wait a few years. That’s good parenting. But please, don’t take the books out of the library. Don’t hide the maps because you don’t like the terrain. Think of everything we'd miss out on.

“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

G.K. Chesterton

Don't Mess With Earl

Locked inside of me is a giant, muscular man named Earl. He wears sunglasses, a leather jacket, and a face tattoo that says “Don’t Mess With Earl.” Earl wants to come out sometimes and punch convex faces into concave holes but I don’t let that happen because I like to pretend that I’m a nice person. Most days he’s quiet and he doesn’t cause any problems, but some days Earl gets angry and I have to remind him that I’m not actually a giant man with thick muscles. I am a pregnant woman with the muscle tone of a comatose kitten. I can’t shouldn’t do the things he wants me to do.

Before I explain about Earl, let me explain something about pregnancy. People like to come up with cutesy terms for pregnancy. Some people find the process just adorable. Preggers, prego, pregalicious etc. My prenatal yoga instructor will not say butt, she consistently tells me to sit on my “bun cakes.” When my doctor told me that I was having a boy she said “there’s the teenie weenie.” My husband had to interpret for me because I hadn’t heard the word “weenie” since middle school.

So when people told me about “pregnancy brain” I didn’t think that it was a real thing. I thought it was just a cutesy way of  saying that I’d be extra tired for nine months. I didn’t expect the following: lack of focus, forgetfulness, getting all teary-eyed at every death in my zombie audiobook, hate-crying on my husband when he wakes me up from a nap...the list goes on and on. But that’s ok because it’s socially acceptable for pregnant women to be sleepy, emotional, and slightly cranky. You can still play that off as adorable.

Earl isn’t adorable. He doesn’t do cutesy. And he really wants a nap.

When I’m tired or dealing with “pregnancy brain” or whatever this is then I’m too distracted to keep him in check. At moments like this it is dangerous for a stranger to suggest that perhaps my lawn chair is beyond the approved lawn chair zone in the amphitheater. When that stranger points to the “No Lawn Chairs Past This Point” sign he’s actually just pointing out the nearest blunt heavy object to beat him with. Earl appreciates his consideration.

Realistically the stranger was right and I was wrong. After a brief and entirely embarrassing confrontation I took down my lawn chair. But the adrenaline would not fade. I was angry for at least a half hour and then I felt like an idiot for the rest of the evening.

It’s times like this that I wish I was a little bit more like Earl. People carefully consider their options before bothering a guy who looks like that. I want a simple, easy way to signal to people “Don’t mess with me; I’m tired and I haven’t eaten in two hours.” Instead of yelling at strangers I could just glare menacingly and achieve the same result...Or I can simply wait until my gut starts to actually look like a baby bump. I’ve heard that works too. People think twice before messing with women who are hugely pregnant. Plus it’s less permanent than a face tattoo.

Writers! Go to Small Conventions

This post could also be titled: Brandon Sanderson, Charles E. Gannon, Myke Cole and Dark Quest Books.

An equally accurate title would be: Absolutely ZERO Cockroach Erotica.

I didn’t use the first title because maybe you’ve never heard of those names. I didn’t use the second title because no one wants to click on a link with the words “cockroach erotica” even if you guarantee that there’s none of that business going on.

Instead I choose to focus on what I got out of the small convention scene.

1. Treated like a Colleague Not a Fan

At major conventions writers and other creators of cool things are swamped with more fans than they can reasonably handle. Their job is to quickly smile, sign things, and  just survive. By all accounts it’s a fun but brutal experience for them and they can’t afford to stop and chat.

At a small indie convention like Balticon or Capclave the writers are more relaxed. They don’t have to process you like a customer service rep at an airport after a blizzard. Instead of a quick smile you get questions about your own work, and when you ask questions they listen with the assumption that you’ll be joining their ranks soon.

2. Sincere interactions with Authors and Publishers

I hate the word networking, everyone does. So yeah, I came with a prepared pitch about my work.  I didn’t have the opportunity to use my canned little speech, instead I had multiple natural interactions with authors, editors, and particularly Dark Quest Books.

They’re a small publisher, not the sort that’s going to get you into Barnes and Noble, but a legit start for speculative fiction writers. Everyone from the owner to the authors was polite and encouraging to me. On that note I want to plug my friend and fellow writing group member Day Al-Muhamed who recently coauthored and published a book through Dark Quest. I’ve only read snippets so far, but Day’s work is consistently excellent.

Baba Ali and the Clockwork Djinn. A Steampunk Faerie Tale.

3. Writing Advice

I listen to the Writing Excuses podcast, I have a savvy writing group that teaches me constantly, and I learned me real good how to grammar back in high school. Still, there’s a lot to be said for writing advice that comes face to face from actual writers.

I skipped the panels with Brandon Sanderson because they were packed and the one panel I attended with him was exactly like listening to the Writing Excuses podcast. So although he was an excellent speaker, I decided to spend some time with other authors at Balticon.

Love your podcast, love your Mistborn Series.

It’s the little tips like the one I got from erotica author Stephanie Burke. I’ve never read her work, but she has the fascinating concept of shape shifting as an alien STD. She mentioned that one of her characters shapeshifts into a cockroach and she detailed the amount of research that she had to do to write cockroach characteristics correctly. One of the other authors on the panel also has a binder of cockroach facts. Of course I’d heard before that I should research and compile information, but I don’t really have a good system for storing and retrieving my info. Listening to them discuss their fun facts about roaches really drove home the fact that EVERYTHING is research and EVERYTHING needs to be stored.

As a side note, Stephanie later assured me that none of her seventy something erotica books feature cockroach sex. Big relief. Faith in humanity restored.

Stephanie Burke. And this is her official picture from her press kit.

I also had the pleasure of sitting down with Myke Cole, author of the Military Fantasy series Shadow Ops. I never got around to asking him questions about urban fantasy and how he manages to make his magical deaths so interesting. I was too busy listening to him discuss the current state of military science fiction. Bottom line is that the military culture is changing and the fiction’s gotta change with it. Gone are the days when “soldier” meant “christian white guy aged twenty, likes guns and cars*.” It made me think about how I need to really develop some of my “tough guy” background characters.

Myke Cole, every time I say his name I use my "Action Movie Trailer" voice. It sounds better that way, try it.

4. Career Advice

In almost every panel I had the opportunity to ask questions and get long, thoughtful responses from authors and editors. Most of the information isn’t earth shattering, but it gives you a feel for what’s selling right now, who’s winning awards, and what editors are dying to read more of. There was all the usual discussion of whether or not authors should self publish, some bewailing of the fact that you need an agent nowadays, and the usual condemnation of vanity presses.

Charles E. Gannon was all around lovely. Not only was he one of the best speakers at Balticon, but when I sat down with him he seemed to be genuinely interested in helping aspiring authors break into the business. He advised me to use small publishers as a stepping stone to larger publishers rather than weeping when I get rejected by one of the Big Five*.

Charles E. Gannon who kindly stepped into the role of wise sage on the mountain.

He also spoke about career/life balance and writing amidst distractions. I asked him how he managed to write so much while raising children. He took a look at my pregnant belly and just laughed. It was the helpless, sympathetic laugh that said “you have no idea what you’re in for.”

Not exactly encouraging.

I’ll admit that I still haven’t read his books, but I put his novel Fire with Fire on my reading list, if only because he was just so dang helpful.

So writers, go to small conventions. It’s worth the bus ticket and the cost of admission. If nothing else you’ll want to be a familiar face when it’s time to start pitching your novel.

*Not the authors’ words, I’m just paraphrasing.