A Little Angst Cannot be Helped

Chuck E Cheese: A Boycott

I hope Rainer never asks me to take him to Chuck E Cheese. I will want to say no. My reasoning is not what you may think.

When I was eight or so, my grandparents to me to Chuck E Cheese for the first time.  It was amazing!

Large furry animals played musical instruments a stage flooded with electric light. There was a carnival with towering rides rooms packed with noisy, flashing games. And everyone ate pizza! There was so much delicious pizza! It was like that land in Pinocchio where adults didn’t exist. Kids made the rules and the kids said: Let there be pizza and carousels and a monstrous animal band performing underneath a florescent light show.

I assumed Chuck E Cheese to be a unique and magical place in New Hampshire where my grandparents were so lucky to live. But there was a Chuck E Cheese in Maine! In North Carolina, too. When my mother informed me there were Chuck E Cheeses all over the continent, I frowned. My enthusiasm teetered. Even then, my instinct for quality sniffed out the suspicious stink of mass production.

Two years later, when my family and I drove by a disheveled strip mall and I spotted it, there, snuggled beneath run down neon and washed up paint that I vowed never to return to that Cheesy place. My memory of that childhood experience was too precious and I valued it over what I knew I would discover to be the reality. I realized at 10 that my memory of the place was a child’s illusion and that I had to protect it.

The story line is way more two dimentional than what I remember.

I refused to allow Chuck E Cheese to suffer the same fate as so much else those years: Pizza Hut, Rainbow Bright movies, my great aunt Lisa–all those people, places and events that were never “the same” once reality reared its wise but unhappy head.

Children Have the Right to Angst

It amazes me when adults talk so poorly of the teenager. They criticize the young person’s bad attitude, their rebellion, their mopiness, their angst.

Angst= Negative emotion caused by a world that doesn’t match what was expected– in a teenager’s case–what you were led to expect.

How can we blame these young adults their disconcerted natures? They’ve been told Christmas is a time of resolute magic and love. A time when everybody is happy, well fed, and unwrapping gifts while clad in warm, footy pajamas. They’re told that babies are made when two people are in love, from their love. They are told they can be whatever they want to be if only they try. They are told that when they wish upon a star, that adults are always right and the policeman are always good.

In fact, whenever I think about the cold shower of reality I get angsty all over again.

Five years ago, while working on my first full length novel, a coworker asked me what the book was about. I mumbled some coming of age mumbo jumbo to which he replied, “Oh, it’s one of those angsty, coming of age endeavors.”

I got all offended and huffy puffy.

“No,” He said, holding up his hands, “I mean, I think teen angst is one of the purest emotions most humans feel in their life times.”

My Adult Angst Still Comes and Goes

I suffer bouts of angst from time to time (less often now that I have so many “grown up” distractions like motherhood and the pursuit of a writing “career”)

Sometimes my adult angst is caused by the traditional culprits like the all-consuming rat race, the insincerity of most people in their social roles, balancing my desire for free time with my ever mounting responsibilities.

Cake image by x-Bright Eyes-x

Sometimes my angst is more retro (and embarrassing)–like, on my birthday, how I cried for the lack of a proverbial pinata. I wanted a room full of “surprise!”. I wanted birthday wrapping paper and a triple layer cake of 28 candles. I wanted people to shout “Happy Birthday” to me upon first seeing my face and I wanted them to mean it. I wanted the excitement you get when you turn five.

But the reality was much more humdrum. My husband failed to mention it until after we’d been up for two hours. There were no balloons and no wild applause. Let’s face it, birthday’s really aren’t all that thrilling to people outside of the immediate birthday realm.

That’s where my mother came in. She called resplendent with excitement. “It’s not 4:27 yet! You’re still 27! Yay!” Her voice crackled and popped with vibrant, motherly sincerity. She was talking to her daughter on her birthday. It didn’t matter if I was eight or forty eight.

My mother was lovely, enthusiastic and it donned on me how much the day meant for her. It was our day really. As the world’ s enthusiasm wilted,she  and I, alone (maybe my dad) would never fail to feel the day’s meaning. We would share it and I wish I had bought her flowers.

Thus, my angst ended like much angst ends, in looking past my self-consumption  to a world so much bigger and more beautiful than my pithy pouting self could imagine.

The Enemy of Innocence is Time

William Golding did not think children were very innocent.

I think of Henry Rainer and his angst is unavoidable on some level. There will always be expectation and disappointment, but I can help ease the transition.

We believe the innocence of children to be sacred for better and for worse. There is something for the disillusioned adult in the innocence of the child. There is something for the world in children innocence: (hope, I suppose).

That said, I think adults have turned that innocence into too much of a kitschy symbol, and I’m not convinced kids are as innocent as we wish they were. (That’s another can of worms for another time)

Anyhow, my challenge as a mother is to help introduce my son to a messy world without wounding him or his natural innocence unnecessarily.

How do you create a magical world for your child without creating an over idealized wonder land that will inevitably come crashing down?

I suppose the secret lies in moderation (between truth, gentle euphemism and out right avoidance)

Maybe the secret is resting my own faith in this world’s tenebrous beauty.

The world is a beautiful, magical place and I suppose what I can give to my son is the sensitivity to see it and the tenacity to put his faith there despite the “realities” this world will inevitably throw at him.