On the Border, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise

July 12, 2014 Martha Thomases 3 Comments

A few thoughts while waiting at the bank for an open ATM.

•  There was a time in my adult life when I had to plan my life around the chore of getting cash.  In order to get cash, I could either keep all of my money in a mattress, or go to a bank during banking hours.  Banking hours were between nine in the morning and three in the afternoon.

•  Not only did I have to physically go to the bank, but I had to fill out a withdrawal slip (or write a check to “Cash”) and wait on line for a teller.  And if the line was long, and the clock struck “Three,” I was shit out of luck.

•  On the other hand, I could get $20 and it would last me a week.  Especially if I didn’t let my husband know I had cash, because then he would spend it all on magazines.

•  Magazines were like websites, except on paper.  You could only get new ones at certain times, because they had to be delivered by truck from the printer.  My husband and I were completely addicted.  Once, we spent $26 on an Italian magazine about shoes that we couldn’t read because it was in Italian, simply because we had to own it.

•  I no longer know where that magazine is, but I’d like to look at it again.

•  We had to have cash on us all the time because there were lots of places that didn’t take credit cards.  Not only that, but we only had a $500 limit on the card we did have.

•  In those days when we had to have cash on us all the time, we also had to make sure we had ample amounts of necessities.  There were more than a few times we didn’t have enough diapers to get through the weekend, and none of the stores in a ten block radius had the right size.  For you kids out there, this is what life was like before Amazon.

•  When ATMs first appeared, I didn’t trust them.  I didn’t want anyone to see me punching in my code, or knowing that I had cash on me.  There were stories on the news about creepy folks who would stand around ATMs, waiting to rob people who used them.  I don’t know why I assumed that they wouldn’t rob me, just because I walked through the entire bank instead of just by the ATM.

•  It was a different time in Manhattan.  Artists lived in my neighborhood, in enormous lofts they had converted themselves.  We could go out to a club for a night of rock’n’roll for about ten bucks, including drinks, since we were writers for magazines (see above).  Even less, if we knew the band and could get on the guest list, which usually included drink tickets.  The bands we went to see didn’t have bodyguards, so it was easy to meet them and get on their guest lists the next time.

•  When we had our baby, we would bring him to gallery openings.  He would crawl around on the floor, laughing and clapping with delight at the art that appealed to him.  Almost all of the artists enjoyed this.

•  If they didn’t, we wouldn’t bring him to their next opening.  We loved our son, but we tried not to be assholes about it.

•  People were already complaining about yuppie parents, who treated their children like fashion accessories.  With private schools costing $20,000 a year (that was then – it’s easily twice that much now), having a kid or two was a way for white people to show how much disposable income they had.

•  We met kids at the playground who always had nannies with them.  It didn’t matter if it was in the evening, or on the weekend.

•  I always wondered why people had kids if the kids were always with the nannies.  Ours never was.  The only reason we ever hired a baby-sitter was that our therapist ordered us to do so.

•  I realize that the children of those other parents might not have been as fabulous as mine.  Even now that he’s a grown-up and doesn’t think I can produce raspberries by magic, he’s the person I most want to hang out with.

•  As a parent, I would do anything for my kid.  I’m lucky, in that I haven’t had to make any truly difficult decisions.  We worried about what was the right high school and college for him, but nobody was shooting at us.  I didn’t have to notice that being asleep in my home was putting his life in danger.

•  I can’t imagine being in a situation so horrible that I would send my minor child, alone, to walk away to a foreign country.  The fact that so many tens of thousands of parents are doing so every day proves that my imagination has not kept up with the modern world.

•  Taking care of the children and the helpless is a trait known as “charity,” and it is something that Christians claim is important to them.  Right-wing Christians use their love of children as part of the argument against abortion rights.

•  Right wing conservatives (who may or may not be Christian) are demonstrating against the influx of refugee children from Latin America.  In many cases, they refuse to let buses carry these children to detention centers, where they might be processed through legal channels.

•  There are no Right-to-Life demonstrators opposing the above-mentioned conservatives.  If they disagree with that point of view, they are keeping their opinions to themselves, at least as far as Google will tell me.

• Why are people so upset about thousands of refugee children within our borders?  There are many reasons:  it’s tragic that they are separated from their parents, they will need specially trained experts to deal with the trauma they’ve experienced and, oh yeah, the money.

• And politics.  Conservatives may, if fact, love children, but not as much as they hate Obama.

•  Note:  I’m not crazy about the way Obama has dealt with this, either.  I think the law has tied his hands to an extent, but I would like to see him use his bully pulpit to advocate for those kids.

•  I wonder if anyone in Manhattan just gets $20 from an ATM anymore.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, would be less cranky if someone would fix her air conditioners.