Lauren, you’ve sort of gone off topic here….
Ah yes, let me return to bragging. Like Gilmore Girls, Parenthood was another show that was a “people are happy to see you at the airport” show. It is an enjoyable perk of the job to see people’s faces light up when they run into you, and maybe you get to hear a story of how something on your show reminded them of something good in their own lives. I wouldn’t know, but I’m guessing this is preferable to them running away from you screaming, “Meth! Meth! So many years of meth!”
I think I’ve had enough. Can you please just think of one negative thing to say about working there?
Um…huh…let me see…Oh, I know! The Universal lot is off Lankershim Boulevard, which is one exit farther from my house on the 101 freeway than Warner Brothers, where we shot Gilmore Girls. So it took me about three minutes longer to get to work in the morning. Oh, the hardship I endured with these people!
PHOTO: ? SHAWN BRACKBILL
A Note from Your Friend Old Lady Jackson Old Lady Jackson is a character I made up when I started catching myself giving advice—initially to Mae and Miles on the Parenthood set—that sounded like it came from your gray-haired grandma who spends her days in a rocking chair knitting you scratchy socks you pretend to love at Christmas. By creating this character, who was obviously very, very, very far away from myself, I hoped to confuse Mae and Miles, among others, into thinking that while I might sometimes seem to offer suggestions that could be considered a tad “old-timey,” they weren’t actually coming from me; they were really coming from this weird, remote other persona, and I was actually still very hip and relevant and wore my L. L. Bean duck boots ironically, and of course I knew who Tegan and Sara were (but only because Miles made me a CD).
When I started feeling older than my co-stars and other younger friends—some of whom were in their teens and early twenties—it was not in the normal ways I would’ve expected, like getting up from a chair and exclaiming “Oy, my hip!” For me, it started when my mention of Happy Days was met with a blank stare, and I couldn’t convince anyone that the AOL pager had ever been a “thing.” Because I live in Hollywood and am contractually bound never to age, instead of shouting “Your generation doesn’t understand anything!” and stalking off to use the landline to call my answering service, I’d just roll my eyes and say, “I don’t mean to sound like Old Lady Jackson here, but do you really want to post that picture of yourself in your underwear on Instagram?” As if to say, Of course it’s fine with me if you do that, because personal boundaries are so late 1990s, but someone way less cool, who doesn’t use Postmates to get their groceries delivered, might think it’s just a wee bit of an overshare.
Old Lady Jackson isn’t judgmental; she’s just worried about you, and wonders about things like your nose ring (doesn’t that hurt? And how can you possibly keep it clean?) and that sixth tattoo you got (isn’t five enough?). But not me—no sirree, I’m proud of you for expressing yourself!
One morning in the Gilmore Girls makeup trailer (during the first series) I was prattling on to Alexis about the possibility of getting a tattoo and the exciting potential of designing it myself, because, I explained, that’s where the real fun was, the real artistry. I could just picture my new tattooed life: I’d be out at some cool club or bar (assuming that along with my new tattoo I had also started going to cool clubs and bars for the first time ever), and some hot dude in a biker jacket would catch my eye and appreciatively check me out, and what better conversation opener, what more sure path to lifelong happiness and true bliss, than “Cool tat. Did you design that yourself?”
After I went on and on about my fantasy post-tattoo life for a while, Alexis smiled and gently said, “So, what would you get? A shamrock?”
Um, no. I mean, what? NO. A sham—? Please, that’s just SILLY! Why would you think I’d get something as predictable as a sham—OH DEAR HOW EMBARRASSING YOU’RE RIGHT. I’M A CLICHé OF A SOMEWHAT IRISH PERSON. But hey, it’s not like I was going to put it on my ankle, so at least there’s—OH FINE OKAY YES THAT’S EXACTLY WHERE I WAS GOING TO PUT IT.
After my embarrassment faded, I realized I didn’t want a tattoo anymore. Why? Because through her (more mature) eyes I suddenly saw the inherent futility of it. All at once, it was like I’d done it already, experienced a brief thrill, lived with it for a couple of years, and eventually woke up one day and felt like, huh, what a weird thing that was for me to do.
Sometimes the idea of doing something is the most fun part, and after you go through with it, you feel deflated because you realize you’re back to looking for the next thrill. Often, waiting reveals the truth about something, and not responding to your every impulse can save you the heartache of waking up in the morning with a sense of regret after having impulsively texted that guy at 2:00 a.m. because you just had to tell him about the funny skit you just watched on SNL, and it’s not like you want to date him or anything, and you’d only had one glass of wine, or was it two? But in any case he was probably up anyway! Don’t press send, Old Lady Jackson is fond of counseling. Just wait a beat.
Talking about getting a tattoo was, I realized, a perfect case of life being about the journey and not the destination. And I felt relieved to have saved myself from reaching my destination with a lot of tattoos on my upper butt area that I’d then changed my mind about.
One of the best things about Old Lady Jackson is that when you don’t take her advice (Miles and Mae have approximately seven thousand piercings between them, and exactly 152 tattoos each), it’s fine with me! She’s no fun, but I still am!
Old Lady Jackson is concerned about you in other ways too, but I think you’re doing great! OLJ is (obviously overly) worried about things like that dating app that wants you to have your location services on all the time (how is that possibly safe?) and the fact that all you ate yesterday were liquids that came in mason jars from that juice place on the corner (really? No solid foods at all?). OLJ doesn’t love it when that guy texts you at eleven o’clock on a Friday night after you haven’t heard from him all week and wants you to “hang out,” and you do. She’s worried that you aren’t being treated as well as you deserve, and while she understands that “things are different now,” surely there have to still be people out there with better manners and an ability to make plans with you at least a day or two ahead of time?
Old Lady Jackson is also very worried about the alarming number of young people she’s heard are being prescribed Adderall so that they can “focus better at school or work.” In OLJ’s day, they called the feeling of not wanting to sit in the library for hours the “feeling of not wanting to sit in the library for hours.” And it wasn’t considered a medical condition to be bored or distracted at work; it was just part of the reality of work.