my boys
I AM A MOON JUNKIE. Every time I look at the moon, I feel less alone and less afraid. I tell my boys that moonlight is a magic blanket and the stars above us are campfires set by friendly aliens. I track lunar cycles on my iPhone and take my kids outside at night when a moon is new or full or blue. We call this “moon hunting” and we bring flashlights and moon candy along. The moon candy looks suspiciously like M&M’s, but so far neither of my sons has noticed.
On moon-hunting nights, I give them a bath and rub both of my boys down with Aveeno lotion and comb their hair. I spread Aquaphor on my lips and try to kiss them. Sometimes I chase them around until I catch one and throw him on the bed like a bag of laundry. Most times I am too tired. Then we head outside. We wear pajamas, because going outside at night in your pajamas feels like breaking out of jail. I watch their little fat feet and their shiny cheeks as they jump into the backseat of the car. These boys, they are delicious. I swear, if I could eat my children, I would. I’d consume them like some beast in a Hieronymus Bosch painting, but in a friendlier, more momlike way. Their little bodies make me salivate. It takes everything I have not to swallow them whole.
During one full moon, I announced my plans to drive to an open field and have us climb into our sleeping bags and howl at the night sky. As we drove to my preplanned spot, my boys once again reminded me to stay in the moment and stop overthinking. They kept pointing to the huge moon, shouting, “Mama, it’s right there. We don’t have to drive to the moon! It came to us!” We pulled over just a few blocks from our Los Angeles home and abandoned my previous plan. I spread out a blanket and we snuggled together, our bodies on the warm hood of the car. The car hood was slippery so we used our bare feet for traction. We all made wishes. I wished that my children would be kind and happy and I would wake up with a flatter stomach. Archie wished that “everyone in the world was a robot.” Abel wished for “more Legos.” They are boys, my boys. My Archie boy. My baby Abel.
My boy Archie has eyes the color of blueberries. He has a solid sense of design and is only months away from his first cartwheel. When he was just two weeks old, his dad and I took a picture of him in his crib with the New York Times draped over him like a blanket. The headline read OBAMA: RACIAL BARRIER FALLS IN DECISIVE VICTORY. He loves to run and strongly identifies with Luke Skywalker because they “have the same hair.” He recently told me, “Mama, do you want to know something funny about me? I am afraid of little things and not afraid of big things.” I think he was talking about bugs and elephants, but I understood what he meant in a very deep way. He deals primarily in poop and fart jokes, and insists these things will never fail to make him laugh. He is absolutely right. He is delighted when I laugh at him, but he is no ham. He is sensitive and stubborn, and as of this printing would like to be a police officer and a veterinarian and also Iron Man. He once asked me, “Are you sad that you don’t have a penis?” I told him that I was happy with the parts that I had. I then reminded him that girls have vaginas and everyone is different and each body is like a snowflake. He nodded in agreement and then looked up at me with a serious face and asked, “But did you once have a penis and break it?” I was tempted to make a joke that would screw him up for life. “Yes, my son. Your mother once had a penis but it broke because you didn’t love her enough.” The bond between mothers and sons is powerful stuff. I firmly believe that every boy needs his mom to love him and every girl needs her dad to pay attention to her. Archie needed to figure out if I had ever owned and operated a penis. I get it. His penis is important to him. Anyway, he starts college next year. Just kidding, he’s six. He recently asked if he could marry me and I said yes. I couldn’t help it. I would marry him anytime.
My boy Abel has eyes the color of a pine forest. He is a red monkey who named himself. I went to a psychic before he was born and she told me I was having “another big boy. He wants to be called Abel.” We agreed. As he was born, the song “Young Turks” played on the radio and Rod Stewart sang, “Young hearts be free tonight / Time is on your side.” Abel has chocolate chip freckles and hair like a copper penny. He loves to dance and sing and recently composed a song called “I’m a Genius.” He is a big hugger. He doesn’t mind when I stick my head into his neck and smell him. He smells like a love cookie. He recently told me he “really like[s] it when girls wear nice blouses.” He has a deep laugh and thinks Darth Vader is funny. He cries big tears and sweats in his sleep. He makes friends on airplanes. He is four. The first thing he does when he wakes up in the morning is look for Archie. He loves his big brother so intensely. His big brother protects him and tortures him. Abel feels like the wisest and oldest member of our family. When he was just starting to talk he used to ask me if I was happy. He has dreams that he is a different little boy with black hair and one eye. My beautiful Tibetan nanny, Dawa, believes he has been reincarnated many times.
When I was pregnant with Abel, Archie and I used to take naps together. We spent part of that summer in Nantucket and every afternoon we would snuggle together as the breeze blew in. I was holding one baby on the inside and one on the outside. I count those naps as some of the happiest times in my life. I imagined a peaceful and quiet life with my two boys. I pictured kissing their heads as they obediently put themselves to bed, as in a John Irving novel. I was so stupid. Everything is loud now. My guys need to touch each other all the time. They wrestle and bump and yank. They play like lion cubs, rolling around until one of them decides to bite. They jump off couches and buzz around on scooters. They swing sticks and tell people “food goes into your stomach and turns into poop.” They love dinosaurs and superheroes and sounding like both. Everything is physical and visual and feelings are expressed by karate kicks.
I love my boys so much I fear my heart will explode. I wonder if this love will crack open my chest and split me in half. It is scary, this love.
I should point out here that I have a picture of them wearing underwear on their heads while simultaneously pooping. Archie is on the toilet and Abel is on a potty and they are facing each other and smiling like crazy people. I plan on using it for blackmail when they are teenagers and won’t let me hug them in public anymore.
When your children arrive, the best you can hope for is that they break open everything about you. Your mind floods with oxygen. Your heart becomes a room with wide-open windows. You laugh hard every day. You think about the future and read about global warming. You realize how nice it feels to care about someone else more than yourself. And gradually, through this heart-heavy openness and these fresh eyes, you start to see the world a little more. Maybe you start to care a teeny tiny bit more about what happens to everyone in it. Then, if you’re lucky, you meet someone who gently gestures for you to follow her down a path that allows you to feel a little less gross about how many advantages you’ve had in life. I was lucky. I met Jane.
Dr. Jane Aronson and I were at a fancy party thrown by Glamour magazine when we fell in love. We were both being given a Glamour Women of the Year Award. This type of award is really nice to win and also slightly embarrassing. It’s hard to be surrounded by women who stood up against a totalitarian regime and talk to them about my experiences writing sketches where a girl farts a lot. Before the party, I Googled Dr. Jane and read all about her great work transforming the lives of orphaned children all over the world. As I sat in my seat and stared at Rihanna’s gorgeous extraterrestrial face, I flipped through that evening’s program and learned that Jane had founded the Worldwide Orphans Foundation, which addresses the medical, social, and educational needs of children living in orphanages in over eleven countries. But it wasn’t until I heard Jane speak that the abstract idea of her work became real. She spoke plainly and openly about how every child in the world deserves the basic things in life: food, clothes, safety, shelter, and love. She was joined onstage by many orphans whose lives she had changed. She cried. I cried. We all cried. Then Bill Clinton introduced Maya Angelou and I thought to myself, “What the fuck am I doing here?”
After the event there was a loud party filled with famous people. This is going to sound like a real douche-bag thing to say, but I have been to a lot of parties with famous people and they aren’t that great. Famous people are never as interesting as your friends. Parties with lots of famous people are usually crowded. I tend to feel plain and over- or underdressed. I get nervous. I don’t like crowds because I am small and fear being trampled. My ideal night out is a dinner party in my backyard with a group of like-minded friends whom I boss around in a gentle and loving way.
Jane is bossy and socially uncomfortable in just the same way, and so naturally we started talking. Let me take a minute to say that I love bossy women. Some people hate the word, and I understand how “bossy” can seem like a shitty way to describe a woman with a determined point of view, but for me, a bossy woman is someone to search out and celebrate. A bossy woman is someone who cares and commits and is a natural leader. Also, even though I’m bossy, I like being told what to do by people who are smarter and more interesting than me. Jane asked me to host her next event. She spoke about her travels all over the world. I told her I would love to do that someday and she said, “Okay, then. We will.” I hosted an event for her that next year and we became friends. Then she took me to Haiti a year after, as she’d promised.
At the end of 2012, I was in the middle of separating from my husband and preparing to host the Golden Globes for the first time. I felt completely sorry for myself while simultaneously believing I was hot shit. I spent a melancholy but sweet New Year’s Eve with my wonderful friends Jon and Jen and Meredith and Tom and Rachel and Marco. We went to see Sleep No More, an epic NYC masquerade ball. I watched a beautiful dance piece as the clock struck midnight and was mesmerized by a young dancer who looked like Natalie Portman. At one point she touched my shoulder and I wondered if I should have sex with girls for a while. I was all over the place. My life was an open suitcase and my clothes were strewn all over the street. I was happy to be wearing a mask that night because I didn’t have any idea who I was. Great things were happening in my career and my personal life had exploded. I was trapped in an awful spiral of insecure narcissism. I was nervous and excited to go to Haiti with Jane, if only for a change of scenery. When relationships end, it’s hard at first to stay in a setting you used to share. No one wants to be the cat scratching at the door that won’t open. And so, I boarded a plane bound for Haiti on New Year’s Day 2013.
I was traveling with Jane and her colleague Noah Gonzalez, along with a few others. When asked if this was anyone’s first visit to a third-world country, a fourteen-year-old girl named Grace and I raised our hands. I made note of this. On the flight, Jane spoke casually about Haiti and its challenges. It was a country filled with young people. Sixty-five percent of the country was under twenty years old and many Haitians died from diseases like hypertension and asthma. There are over 700 orphanages in Haiti. There are over 430,000 orphans. On top of all of that, the earthquake. A country with a battered and bruised infrastructure had just suffered a devastating earthquake. It sounded like there was so much to fix. It sounded overwhelming. I sat on the plane and listened to music.
I wondered if I was just doing this as some kind of ego trip. Then I decided I didn’t care. Not enough is made of the fact that being of service makes you feel good. I think nonprofits should guarantee that giving your time and money makes your skin better and your ass smaller. Why not? There are so many people in the world with so little. Who cares why you decide to help?
We navigated the busy Port-au-Prince airport, and I felt very white and very tired. I felt like I was in a movie where the divorcée tries to turn her life around. I felt like a cliché, and I was angry that my head was filled with what felt like such self-indulgent bullshit. We met our driver, a young and handsome Haitian man. I thought about trying to have sex with him but did the math and figured the rest of the week would be too awkward once he had gently turned me down. Then I fantasized about him changing his mind and knocking on my door late at night. Then I realized I was in Haiti and was not paying attention. He leaned over, smiled, and said, “Welcome to Haiti. You might love it or you might hate it, but you will never forget it.” I decided I would have sex with him if he so desired.
My first impression was of total chaos. The streets of Port-au-Prince were filled with dust and trash and babies. There was so much to look at. Everyone was busy carrying something. A man had a tray of hamburgers on his head. Women were trucking their laundry through the streets as young children pulled heavy pots of water. The roads were twisted and full of debris. It looked like someone had picked up Haiti, held it upside down, and shaken it. It felt unmoored. I understood the feeling. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not some crazy white girl who is comparing her divorce to the problems of the Haitian people. All I am saying is it felt totally chaotic and therefore familiar to my brain. We passed groups of handsome young boys hanging out on dirt bikes. I thought of the Sinéad O’Connor song “Black Boys on Mopeds.” Then I thought of Sinéad O’Connor ripping up the picture of the pope. Then I thought about writing jokes for famous people. Then I wondered if I should ask the Haitian driver to be my date at the Golden Globes. Then I snapped back to the present and remembered where I was.
Style is obviously important in Haiti. A lot of people wore bright colors and neatly pressed shirts. The taxis and billboards were beautiful. Haiti is not afraid of color. And texture. And depth. The young people looked fierce and bored. They looked like pure energy. There was a true aesthetic but also a palpable darkness. I mean, let’s get real. Kids are slaves there. Kids are bought and sold and put to work. I saw Haitian boys with bodies the same sizes as Archie’s and Abel’s carrying huge jugs of water. In just a few minutes you could tell which kids had parents and which were on their own. I kept trying to connect the small children and the adults they were walking next to. I was looking for comfort. I was uncomfortable. You know that horrible feeling when you lose your kid for a minute in a mall and your heart pounds and your ears fill with blood? It was that feeling. When I drove the streets of Haiti it felt like many of the children I saw were lost and no one was looking for them. I kept peeking at Jane to see if she saw what I saw, but she was only concerned with what was ahead.
We visited one of WWO’s toy libraries. They are rooms filled with donated toys that are organized according to developmental stage. All the toys were beautifully kept and displayed, and the room smelled like vinegar. We all sat in a circle and sang “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” I held an adorable little girl and kept instinctually looking to hand her off to her mother, until I realized she didn’t have one.
We drove up to Kenscoff, which is a mountainous and much greener part of Haiti. It reminded me of Haiti’s rich and fancy cousin, the Dominican Republic, and how places so close could also be so far apart. We hiked up a hillside and I felt old. I sent e-mails to my assistant about the Golden Globes with subject headings like “Yes to the Fake Teeth.” We arrived at an open field filled with young Haitian WWO volunteers. They wore matching shirts and led the kids in what looked like improv games. They sang and danced as each kid was encouraged to commit to looking ridiculous. Some of the boys were playing soccer, and Jane tied her long-sleeved shirt around her waist and joined them. I realized there was no getting out of physical activity, so I sashayed over to the small amplifier and started to DJ. A dance party broke out. The kids laughed at me at first until they realized I am a world-class dancer with moves of steel. I was exhausted in ten minutes. Some other children were painting bricks. I imagine the bricks were going to be used for something, but no one told me what. Most of these children were used to living in the moment. Thinking about the future was a luxury. They took turns with their paintbrushes. There was no crying about sharing. There was no pushing or saying they were bored. Everyone was used to waiting.
I met girls with names like Jenica and Suzenie. When I said their names out loud it felt like I had jewels in my mouth. One girl told me her nickname was Sexy. She couldn’t have been twelve, and I worried about who had given her that name. A weird sandstorm kicked up and the dust swirled like a magic trick. We all paused together to watch, and I took a mental picture and time-traveled to the future. I thought about my boys being teenagers and playing soccer and dancing and sharing.
In Kenscoff we ate dinner and heard stories from WWO supervisors. Melissa was a soft-spoken blonde who knew perfect Creole and worked in West Africa with the Peace Corps. Her funny partner, Wendy, came from Michigan by way of Uganda and Kenya. Wendy spoke with what I would call a “world accent,” and she and Melissa told the story of meeting during the Haitian earthquake. Falling in love among the aftershocks . . . it sounded so romantic, and I wondered if Anderson Cooper had ever fallen in love during an earthquake. Then, for the hundredth time that week, I wished I were a lesbian. Melissa and Wendy told us a story about a woman in Haiti who used to dress up like a nun and collect donations for her “orphanage.” She was not a sister of God, and the place she ran sounded like a jail. Melissa cozied up to her until she was finally allowed access inside. The children there were malnourished and dying. Some had rat bites. Girls were being sold into prostitution. WWO brought in toys and youth volunteers. They surreptitiously counted the children as they sang songs with them. They estimated there were at least sixty-five kids in danger in that horrible place. Melissa and Wendy spoke to anyone who listened about the terrible conditions, until the police and UNICEF intervened. The woman threatened them with voodoo, which is no joke in Haiti. Wendy and Melissa scrambled to find placement for all the kids, and on the day they were taken out of that nightmare there were WWO workers waiting in a line so each child had a lap to sit on. That evil woman went to jail. In just one month after he was rescued from her care, one little guy named Shashu went from being a nonverbal boy with a distended belly to being a butterball who loved to sing.
People are very bad and very good.
A little love goes a long way.
The hardest day in Haiti for me was when we visited a few orphanages. Some of these places were doing the best they could. Others had a long way to go. Jane’s colleague Noah and I saw babies living in cribs that looked like cages. A little boy named Woosley jumped into Noah’s arms and wouldn’t let go. He was desperate for attachment, and men were especially scarce. Woosley held on to Noah like a bramble. We were filled with anxiety because we knew we would have to say good-bye. Noah had to drop him back off at his crowded room, and Woosley hung on and started to get upset. He finally got down and faced a corner as he cried. It was the loneliest thing I have ever seen. A teacher went to him, but it barely comforted him.
Those kids needed so much holding. Kisses and hugs and clothes and parents. They needed everything. The enormity of what they needed was so intense. We ended up talking in the street with Jane, and crying. Jane was agitated and passionate. She talked about all the work left to do and all the small changes that can improve children’s lives. I was once again moved by her ability to steer into the curve. Jane was a big-wave rider. She didn’t make the mistake that most of us make, which is to close our eyes and hope the waves will go away or miss us or hit someone else. She dove in, headfirst. That night, I read the deeply calm and at times sneakily funny Pema Ch?dr?n, one my favorite writers: “There are no promises. Look deeply at joy and sorrow, at laughing and crying, at hoping and fearing, at all that lives and dies. What truly heals is gratitude and tenderness.” Pema reminded me to practice tonglen, which is this meditation breathing exercise where you breathe in all the pain and breathe out nothing but love. It felt like the opposite of what I had been doing for a year. I felt one tiny molecule in the bottom of my heart feel better. I heard dogs fucking outside my window and wondered if I should try to find my Haitian driver. I e-mailed Tina about her Mandy Patinkin bit.
On our last night we went to the Hotel Montana, which had started rebuilding after the earthquake. One of the owners, Gerthe, spoke of how she had survived and her sister Nadine had been pulled out of the rubble. I later read in the Washington Post that her sister was trapped for days and found by a beagle that caught her scent. The rescuers brought over her son, who called to her and said, “I think that is my mother down there.” She was pulled out days later. In the same article, Gerthe says that Nadine had been kidnapped in Haiti a few years ago and held for fifteen days. “You have no idea what it takes to survive here,” Gerthe said. I knew she had a very good idea.
Gerthe also talked about travel. She talked about living in Jamaica. She joked about her husband and her haircut, because she is more than the earthquake. A person’s tragedy does not make up their entire life. A story carves deep grooves into our brains each time we tell it. But we aren’t one story. We can change our stories. We can write our own. Melissa and Wendy and Jane and I joked about the Golden Globes and gave each other fake awards. I gave Melissa “Best Person in Charge.” She gave me “Most Famous and Most Normal.” This meant and means a great deal.
Later that night we talked about animals. Wendy shared a story about how her daughter was caught in a stampede of elephants and lived to tell about it because she ran left instead of right. And because she knew one simple fact: elephants leave the way they come in. This reminded me of something I read, that your divorce will be like your marriage. We all agreed that elephants win for coolest animal, and I showed off by reciting my elephant facts. Elephants have long pregnancies and purr like cats to communicate. They cry, pray, and laugh. They grieve. They have greeting ceremonies when one of them has been away for a long time.
I thought of this when I got back to my boys, the elephants and the greeting ceremonies. I told them about how one day we might ride an elephant and they climbed on each other to act it out, switching parts halfway through. I gave them a bath and put lotion on their skin. I realized how lucky my life is. And theirs. I lay in bed and thought about time and pain, and how many different people live under the same big, beautiful moon.
the robots will kill us all:
a conclusion
IN 1997, I PROUDLY DECLARED I WOULD NEVER OWN A CELL PHONE. I was on a New York City street corner and I was young, poor, and knee-deep in free time. A bunch of us were standing around smoking. A cigarette was my cell phone back then, a tiny social unit that helped me fill the day. Suddenly, we noticed Lou Reed walking our way. He strutted toward us like a grouchy mayor in a leather jacket. A Lou Reed sighting was like the first robin in spring; seeing him meant your life was opening up and you finally lived in New York City. He passed by us and we all exhaled. One of my friends took out his cell phone and pretended to call the National Enquirer. It was one of those “flip phones,” a tiny pocket-sized clamshell that looked like a lady razor or a makeup compact. I held it and felt its weight.
“Nope,” I said. “I just don’t need it. Cell phones aren’t for me. What am I going to do? Carry this thing around all day?”
When I was growing up, the Poehlers were the lower-middle-class family that had high-end gadgets. We had an amazing answering machine. It was as big as a toaster oven and used full-sized cassette tapes. I would come home and see the light blinking, excited that someone had tried to call us even when we weren’t around. I would rewind the tape with a giant button and listen to a strange voice asking me to renew my subscription to Seventeen magazine. That answering machine was a big deal. We fought over who would leave the outgoing message, each one of us believing that we could find the right mixture of humor and gravitas beneath our excruciating Boston accents. The answering machine was my personal secretary. I would run home after school and change the outgoing message as needed. “Keri, I am going to the mall. Meet me at Brigham’s and if you get there first order me a chocolate chip on a sugar cone with jimmies.” Sometimes you went somewhere and people didn’t show up. There was no way to instantly reach them unless you went to their house or called them on their home telephone number.
MTV arrived not long after. I would spend hours watching this incredibly cool and new station while thinking, “Finally, someone GETS ME.” I was ten years old and receiving a crash course in adult life. MTV introduced me to punk music and gay people. I met Michael Jackson and his talent split me in half. I would dance all day in my basement listening to Off the Wall. You young people really don’t understand how magical Michael Jackson was. No one thought he was strange. No one was laughing. We were all sitting in front of our TVs watching the “Thriller” video every hour on the hour. We were all staring, openmouthed, as he moonwalked for the first time on the Motown twenty-fifth anniversary show. When he floated backward like a funky astronaut, I screamed out loud. There was no rewinding or rewatching. No next-day memes or trends on Twitter or Facebook posts. We would call each other on our dial phones and stretch the cord down the hall, lying on our stomachs and discussing Michael Jackson’s moves, George Michael’s facial hair, and that scene in Purple Rain when Prince fingers Apollonia from behind. Moments came and went, and if you missed them, you were shit out of luck. That’s why my parents went to a M*A*S*H party and watched the last episode in real time. There was no next-day M*A*S*H cast Google hangout. That’s why my family all squeezed onto one couch and watched the USA hockey team win the gold against evil Russia! We all wept as my mother pointed out every team member from Boston. (Everyone from Boston likes to point out everyone from Boston. Same with Canadians.) We all chanted “USA!” and screamed “YES!” when Al Michaels asked us if we believed in miracles. Things happened in real time and you watched them together. There was no rewind.
HBO arrived in our house that same year. We had no business subscribing to HBO, with the little money we had, but Bill Poehler did not scrimp when it came to TV. I was a TV kid. There was no limit to how much I could watch. I even ate in front of the TV. (My parents will wince at this, but more than once we ate in the living room with TV trays or at the kitchen table with the kitchen TV on.) If we had the money we probably would have put a TV in every corner of our house. My parents didn’t pay much attention to what I was watching because they were too busy working and remortgaging their house. I watched things on HBO that were much too scary and adult for my still-forming sponge brain. Seventies and eighties movies were obsessed with devil kids (The Omen, The Exorcist) and rapey revenge (The Last House on the Left, Death Wish). There were moments in those films that were just scary and sexy enough to burn into my brain and haunt my subconscious for years. But mostly, HBO was about ADULT CONTENT, and that meant movies about Divorce and Intrigue and Betrayal. I learned how adults communicated from watching movies on HBO. I also learned what made me laugh. I watched every comedy I could find: Annie Hall, Caddyshack, Fletch, and Airplane! I sat next to the TV and transcribed The Jerk in blue composition notebooks. I thought about comedy. I thought about being a writer. Technology was creeping into my life in slow and manageable ways. The Future was Almost Now!
I spent my entire college career without a cell phone or e-mail. I typed my papers on a Brother word processor, which had a window that showed five sentences at a time and had a tendency to go on the fritz and make you lose all your work. I typed papers in my dorm and printed them out in my hallway, because I didn’t want to bother my roommate with the loud mechanical noise of the Brother spooling out “Tiny Fists: The Use of Hands in the Early Poems of e. e. cummings.” When I moved to Chicago, I used a paper map that folded in your lap to navigate the city. There was no Internet, no e-mail, no texting, no FaceTiming, no GPS-ing, no tweeting, no Facebooking, and no Instagramming. A few people in the late eighties had giant cell phones that lived in tiny suitcases, and I saw some in movies. I became aware of the existence of e-mail and considered checking out this company called America Online, but the film WarGames had taught me that the computers could start a nuclear war so I decided to wait and see. In the meantime, I wrote letters and maintained a healthy dose of eye contact. I still carried an address book.
And now? Now my phone sits in my pocket like a pack of cigarettes used to. I am obsessed and addicted and convinced that my phone is trying to kill me. I believe this to be true. By the way, when I say “my phone” I mean my phone and my iPad and my laptop and all technological devices in general. Look, I am glad we have electricity and anesthesia, but I think this Internet thing might be a bad idea. Sorry, guys. So far the only good things I have seen to come out of this recent technological renaissance are video-chatting with your grandparents, online dating, and being able to attend traffic school on your computer. The rest is a disaster. The robots will kill us all. Here’s proof:
1.My phone does not want me to finish this book or do any work in general.
After I wrote the first paragraph of this chapter, I checked my phone to see if anyone had e-mailed or texted. Then I Googled “flip phone” and “when did Lou Reed die?” (Rest in peace, Lou Reed.) That eventually led me to watching lovely Laurie Anderson videos and checking out a local place to learn Tai Chi. Then I went to Wikipedia and clicked on “Chinese Medicine.” That reminded me of a healer I once met, which reminded me of a massage, which reminded me I needed my hair done, so I texted my hairdresser friend. She sent me a picture of herself from her recent trip and I put a filter on it with a funny caption and sent it back.
I don’t remember doing any of this. I am telling you, my phone wants me dead.
It wants to sleep next to me and buzz at just the right intervals so I forget to eat or make deadlines.
2.My phone does not want me to have friends.
I’m not on social media. It’s just not my thing. There is an amount of self-disclosure and self-promotion involved that keeps me away. (Says the woman writing a book about herself.) But I’ve learned to never say never. Perhaps in a year there will be some amazing new way to be funny, humble, real, and accidentally sexy all at the same time, with a great filter option and a deep social message attached. I’m guessing it will be called SoulSpill?. Until then, I prefer to stick to group texting with my close friends. I love gathering four or five of the important folks in my life and forcing us to be our own tiny chat room. Remember those? I think if I have established anything in my book, it’s that a key element of being my friend is being comfortable with my forced fun. I realize that a phone addict like me talking about how I don’t do social media is like a heroin junkie bragging about how they would never touch meth. But I like to do things I am good at, and I am sure that having a bigger online presence would only get me in some shit, especially with my history of texting the wrong things to the wrong people.
Once I was wrapping Christmas gifts with an old assistant. She was a young and lovely girl whom I was thinking of firing. Let’s call her Esmerelda (not her name). I texted my husband, Will, and said, “Not now, not today, but eventually we should think about getting rid of Esmerelda.” I went back to wrapping my gifts and chitchatting about my upcoming schedule. Later that night, I received a call from Esmerelda. I had sent the text to her instead. I had sent it while we were together and she read it while I was humming Christmas carols right in front of her. She figured we should talk. She was right. I fired her. Then I threw my phone across the room and hid under my bed.
Another time, I spent an afternoon talking to a friend about a recent relationship she had been in. She had gone back and forth with a guy who was acting like an asshole. She had finally ended it and was processing her feelings. She left the room and I texted another friend and wrote, “Thank god they broke up. He is such an asshole.” My friend came back into the room and asked why I had just texted her that weird sentence. She was upset that I hadn’t even waited five minutes before reaching out to someone else and talking about her. I apologized. I threw my phone into the garbage and tried to run myself over with my car.
I wish I could tell you that those were the only times something like that happened, but it has happened over and over: an e-mail for the wrong eyes, a text to the wrong person, a picture sent with the wrong message underneath. My inability to keep my shit straight made me straighten out my shit. Now, as a rule, I try not to text anything that I wouldn’t mind the whole world seeing. I try to use restraint of pen and tongue and thumb. It’s a constant struggle. If my phone had its druthers, it would butt-dial my frenemies while I was in therapy.
3.My phone wants me to feel bad about how I look.
When I was younger we used to have these things called “parties.” They were fun hangouts where young people would get together and talk and maybe dance. During these “parties” we would take pictures with things called “cameras.” One week later, we would pick up those pictures from a strange man who lived in a tiny hut in the middle of town. By that time the party had become a distant memory, something that I had experienced in real time with little regard as to how I looked. I would receive the hard copies of the pictures and throw away the ones I didn’t like. No one would see those pictures but me. No one would be allowed to comment on those pictures until I decided to share them. They would be a reminder of a good time but not something that kept me distanced from the experience.
Now my phone lets college admission officers check to see if an applicant ever posed in a bra.
My phone also wants to constantly let me know what other people think of me. It lures me into reading about myself. At first, things seem really nice and great. My phone shows me lovely things the Internet made about my show or my work. But the phone doesn’t turn off after I see the good things. It stays on, and in my hand, until I scrape further. Then I find out that some people think I have “a scary face” while other people think I’m “just not funny, period.” My phone shows me that I didn’t really get a lot of e-mails over the weekend. My phone directs me to news that is gossipy and awful. Which leads me to . . .
4.My phone wants to show me things I shouldn’t see.
I read in a book once the three things that shorten your life are smoking, artificial sweetener, and violent images. I believe this to be true. Violent images are not new, but the immediacy with which we see them is faster than ever. During the horrific Boston bombings, I reached out to my family in Watertown and prayed for those injured. I also went to news websites and was met with pictures of a man with his legs blown off. I was not ready for that. Who ever would be? Certainly not that man, who must now live with the pain and struggle of losing his legs, and also live with the pain and struggle of his image being disseminated in perpetuity. Sure, these sorts of visuals have been around a long time. I saw the R-rated movies on HBO. War photographers documented horrors and published them in magazines and books. But one used to have to go to the library or one’s personal book collection to see Nick Ut’s photograph of the naked South Vietnamese girl running after being severely burned. That picture was accompanied by text. It had context. It was surrounded by other moving pictures that told a similar story. Now we can look at the grotesque while we wait in line at the bank.
Porn is everywhere. I am a fan of porn. It can be a very nice accompaniment to an evening of self-pleasure. It’s as important as a good wine pairing. Lest you think I am using fancy language to avoid revealing intimate porn preferences, please know that I prefer straight porn with occasional threesome scenarios that preferably don’t end in facials. I also like men who seem to like women, and women who seem to be on the top of their porn game. I basically like my porn like my comedy, done by professionals. But I am a forty-three-year-old woman, and so I can handle some of the images and feelings that porn conveys. I had a friend whose seven-year-old kid Googled the word “naked” once. The first picture he saw was a woman with asparagus in her vagina and up her butt. That’s just too much to handle. How are we going to get him to eat his vegetables now?
The Dalai Lama has said that Hollywood is “very bad for [his] eyes and a waste of time.” I understand. Most of what my phone shows me is bad for my eyes. My eyes need a rest, spiritually and literally. My eyes hurt from staring at my phone. But of course they do. My phone wants to kill me.
5.My phone wants me to love it more than my children.
Last summer I was sitting next to my youngest son, Abel, on the edge of a swimming pool. He slipped and went under. I jumped in and pulled him out right away. We were both a little scared but thankfully everyone was fine. My phone had been in my back pocket, and my first thought was total triumph that I had chosen my child over my phone. My second thought was complete devastation that my phone had been submerged. I couldn’t Google what to do with a wet phone because my phone was wet, and so I quickly ripped it open and started to dry it with a hair dryer. I used my laptop to get on the Internet, where most sites told me to shove my wet phone in a bag of rice. I had just pulled my little guy out of a pool and I was sweating in my kitchen as I poured rice into a Ziploc bag. I spent the day without my phone, even though I had two other gadgets that allowed me to constantly check my e-mail and texts. I paced around hoping the rice would soak up the water. (It didn’t.) I realized I might have to go out that night without a cell phone. I put my iPad in my purse just in case. I spent the entire dinner reaching for a phantom phone that I didn’t have with me. This is the behavior of a crazy person. Don’t you see what the phone is doing?
6.People text and drive and die. People check their e-mails and get hit by trucks. People fall into shopping mall fountains while texting and the security footage is passed around on the Internet and that person dies of embarrassment.
Enough said.
7.My phone won’t let me go.
It used to be that when we lost our phones we really did lose them. We had to rebuild our contacts list. We had to send out e-mails telling everyone to send us their contact information again. We didn’t have everything saved and backed up. This gave us all a chance to reset. I am a firm believer that every few years one needs to shake one’s life through a sieve, like a miner in the Yukon. The gold nuggets remain. The rest falls through like the soft earth it is. Losing your contacts was a chance to shake the sieve.
Now everything is backed up on the cloud and you can find your phone if you lose it in a taxi. Don’t you realize it’s only a matter of time before our phones can FIND US?
Our phones have somehow convinced us that they aren’t trying to kill us; rather, they’re trying to protect us. You are a ridiculous person if you are not reachable by phone or e-mail. As a parent you are expected to be constantly available at all times. You are encouraged to provide your children with their own devices. You are expected to monitor those devices, keep up with your children’s technology, and have proper age-appropriate conversations about sexting and trolling, all while the super-nerds create apps that allow you to send a picture that disappears within seconds.
My phone has even gotten its grubby, technological hands on this book. This book is expected to have a big e-book presence. People don’t buy books anymore, they buy e-books. Or maybe they buy both? Either way, it’s very important that this sell as an electronic book. I am supposed to be excited about this. Gone are the days when you sat on your couch and turned pages with Dorito-stained fingers. Gone are the days when you took Henry James on the train and read it in front of cute guys to impress them. Gone are the books stuffed with pressed flowers and handwritten notes and hotel room receipts. For a minute, I wanted this book to be stuffed with things that fell out when you opened it, but my editors said no.
(They actually didn’t, I just didn’t get my shit together in time. It’s a whole thing.)
So let’s review.
My phone is trying to kill me. It is a battery-charged rectangle of disappointment and possibility. It is a technological pacifier. I keep it beside me to make me feel less alone, unless I feel like making myself feel lonely. It can make me feel connected and unloved, ugly and important, sad and vindicated.
So what do we do?
Well first, we go back to the Dalai Lama. He says, “I think technology has really increased human ability. But technology cannot produce compassion.”
Man, that’s good. That’s why he’s the Big Lama.
He goes on to say, “We are the controller of the technology. If we become a slave of technology, then [that’s] not good.”
So we must work hard to not be slaves. We must find a way to fight against complacency and mindless patterns. How do we do it? How does it work in movies when the good guys go up against the robots?
1.We try to destroy them.
This is not happening. Technology is moving faster than ever and the Internet is here to stay. Plus, telling someone to not look at bad pictures or comments online is like telling a kid not to eat a cookie. And I’m here to tell you that any actor who says they don’t search for their own name on occasion is a filthy liar.
2.We beat them at their own game.
This theory was the impetus for Smart Girls at the Party, a Web series and website I created along with my friends Meredith Walker and Amy Miles. We wanted to build a brand that attempted to combat the deluge of shit young people see every day online. It actually all started with the idea of one simple show. It would be a Charlie Rose–type interview show for girls that ended in a spontaneous dance party. We wanted to celebrate the curious girl, the nonfamous, the everyday warrior. At first we only knew a few things: we wanted to make content we would have watched when we were younger, and we wanted to end our episodes with a dance party. Spontaneous dance parties are important in my life. I have one in the makeup trailer almost every afternoon on Parks and Recreation. Dancing is the great equalizer. It gets people out of their heads and into their bodies. I think if you can dance and be free and not embarrassed you can rule the world. Smart Girls is growing and changing, and Meredith and I have big plans to open up camps and create more content and connect with more and more young people. Our hope is to provide something for people who can’t stand to look at another awful website highlighting some fame-obsessed garbage person.
3.We believe in people, not machines.
I will finish this book with a little story.
By the way, THANK YOU for reading Yes Please all the way to the end. I know how busy you are.
During my writing process, I struggled with my limited relationship with technology. I was forced to buy a new laptop, and I grew to love my tiny MacBook Air with my badass black cover and UCB sticker on the front. It has traveled with me for over a year and a half as I have pretended to work on this book all across America. Recently I flew to San Francisco, to shoot the finale of our sixth season of Parks and Recreation.
Life is endings and beginnings. Pema Ch?dr?n says we are constantly being “thrown out of the nest.”
It can be hard, this life. Beautiful too. Mine is beautiful, mostly. Lucky me.
I arrived in San Francisco with that rare combination of sadness and joy. There should be a name for that feeling. Maybe it’s “intimacy.” Either way, I had a wonderful time shooting the show and the shit with a cast of people I have grown to love like family. After two days, I reached into my bag to pull out my laptop and work on a piece for the book. The laptop was nowhere to be found. My heart sank. I assumed it had been stolen. Then I had the terrible memory of putting it in a separate tray in the security line. I was tired the morning I flew to San Francisco. I fly a lot, and it can wear you down. I opted out of the X-ray machine, because I was just getting tired of being zapped with rays that nobody could tell me were safe. I mean, if my phone is trying to kill me then that crazy X-ray machine at airport security is a straight-up assassin. I asked for a pat-down. It was nice, actually. A sweet woman and I chatted as she touched me. I didn’t mind. It felt human. She told me she loved me in Baby Mama. I went on my way, but because of the small change in my routine, I had left my laptop at LAX security forty-eight hours before.
The first thing I did was cry. Because, see, I had a lot of writing on my laptop that I hadn’t truly backed up, maybe forty or fifty pages. Technology can often feel like a club that didn’t accept me, and so I punish it by ignoring it, which in turn often hurts me. Then I cried because I was tired, and worried about this book and getting it done while also being a good mom and a pleasant face on camera. Then I cried because I knew this was a first-world problem and I had no right to cry. Then I called TSA Lost and Found.
I spoke to a human. A man. He took my information. He was polite and he listened. He wasn’t a machine. He put me on hold and took a quick look. He came back and said he didn’t see anything matching that description. I started to cry again. He said, “Come on, Amy, you gotta stay positive.” I thanked him. He took my e-mail and I considered my laptop gone for good. For like the millionth time during this process, I considered e-mailing my editors and asking them if I could give the money back and not write this book. The only difference was this time I had a real reason.
A day later I received this.
To: “Poehler, Amy”
From: “Fields, Sharita”
Date: March 5, 2014 at 8:51:04 AM PST
Subject: Recovered Laptop by LAX TSA Lost and Found
Hello Mrs. Poehler,
This is to inform you that your Laptop was located by the TSA at LAX. Your TSA Tracking Item number is 14389 Report Number 192.
(TSA LAX Lost and Found only retains lost items for 30 days from the date of this email.)
1. You can stop by our office in person with your Tracking Number and photo ID. They will return your item after completing the Release Form.
2. You may have someone claim your item on your behalf. On the attached Form, please write in the upper margin: “I (your name) authorized (name of person), to pick up my (items) on my behalf.”
3. If you would like your item shipped to you, please complete the Form and write your FedEx or UPS account number on Line 11 (described on the Return Information Instructions); and TSA Tracking Number on Line 15. Please allow 5-7 business days from the receipt of the Form.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Sharita J. Fields
TSA Lost and Found
Airport Spectrum Building
Every book needs an angel. Yes Please had Sharita Fields.
I went straight to the LAX Lost and Found and recovered my laptop. I explained to Sharita that I was writing a book and I had been sure most of it was lost. I told her I would thank her in my book and send her a copy as soon as I finished. She was polite and professional. She let me take her picture. Look at how cute she is.
She also works with Homeland Security, so you know she knows people.
The only way we will survive is by being kind. The only way we can get by in this world is through the help we receive from others. No one can do it alone, no matter how great the machines are.
YES PLEASE THANK YOU SHARITA.