Stuff I didn't get...

[Jane]

The old move "Suddenly, Last Summer" was on TV recently. I remember reading the play when I was about 15 and utterly innocent. I totally didn't get it. I knew reading it made me uncomfortable, but why? If you haven't read it, it's by Tennessee Williams and concerns a man who travels to South America to ravage young boys on the beach and who is, as I recall, eventually killed and eaten (can I be remembering it right?) by said boys. At the time Williams wrote it, it was rather guarded, and I was utterly confused by why everyone got so upset becasue this guy went to the beach, and, as to how he died, I was baffled.

I took a poetry class in summer school at about the same time and was told by my instructor that we should all be reading The New Yorker faithfully. So I faithfully subscribed (and have been a subscriber lo these many years). The poetry was way beyond me; the fiction was pointless as far as I could see. Even the cartoons were only funny about half the time.

Do any of you remember such experiences?

(I hesitate to admit that I didn't know where babies came from until I was twelve when a friend told me, and I didn't believe her.)-

[slb2]

Well, no. I didn't get the babies configuration. But who really does at first?

Jokes, in general, went over my head. I watched "Love, American Style" and shrugged.

[liriodendron]

When I was in sixth grade I went to Six Flags with a friend and her family. It was her birthday and her parents decided that we could wander around by ourselves while they took her younger sisters on the rides. So there we were, two 12-year-olds with our pockets full of spending money, on our own at a theme park. After riding the rides and eating our fill of junk food, we headed for the souvenir shops where, unbridled by the lack of parental supervision, I purchased a bright green t-shirt silkscreened with a playful cartoon hippopotamus holding a snake in its mouth and the words, "IF IT FEELS GOOD, DO IT!" emblazoned underneath. The innuendo went right over my head.

[joew]

Maybe I'll think of specifics later. For now suffice it to say that I didn't understand very much of what I read in school beyond the basic events of the narratives.

Never read "Suddenly, Last Summer" but saw the movie on TV many years ago and was completely bewildered.

[slb2]

liriodendron said:

I purchased a bright green t-shirt silkscreened with a playful cartoon hippopotamus holding a snake in its mouth and the words, "IF IT FEELS GOOD, DO IT!" emblazoned underneath. The innuendo went right over my head.

I could still use some explanatory remarks, lirio. I don't get it now. ^{read nothing into that}

[Seattle Taz]

slb2 said:

I could still use some explanatory remarks, lirio. I don't get it now. ^{read nothing into that}

Oh, probably a long shot at "one-eyed snake" in the mouth - i.e. felatio.

But I have to say all y'alls are way ahead of me. It sounds like you actually grew up at some point. Myself am stuck at "late latent' which is one of the things I enjoy about myself. Apparently it's that state teetering on the verge of adolescent insanity but not quite over the edge. Sex isn't the first thing I think of and gender is not a large part of my self-identity; on the other hand, when confronted with an actual real guy touching me, my brains abruptly turn to mush and I can no longer be trusted to act like a lady.

The down side is that I *never* get it. I don't wear a wedding ring because I hate the feel of rings on my fingers and at any rate had gotten used to the India-Indian "Mangal Sutra" around my neck; my blessed husband forgives my clinging to this last tangible gift from my late husband and daughter.

But the two together - the pre-adolescent sexual identity and the ringless finger - have left me vulnerable to some pretty interesting conversations. Once a marvelous woman, full of awesome ideas, odd little stories, and quirky humor - a very talented priest from Canada - drove all of the way to see me several times and she brought me an intricately wraught gift of her own hands. I really enjoyed her companionship. But one day she looked me in the eye and said, "You just don't get it, do you?" "What?" says I. "I want to date you!" "Buh buh but I'm married!" Which really is a part of my identity. Same deal with a guy friend of mine - lunch, flowers, etc. i thought he was just being nice.

This was not a nice way to treat these sincere people

[Trusty]

jane said:

Suddenly, Last Summer ... concerns a man who travels to South America to ravage young boys on the beach and who is, as I recall, eventually killed and eaten ... by said boys.

So he ravaged them by giving them the worst gas they had ever had...





When I don't get it, I usually make something up - something that will only be "gotten" by me. (And I GET ludicrous.) ;D

[booklady]

I don't get science.



I try (sort of), especially for the sake of my students. But really, it's hard to get all enthusiastic about the rock cycle.

[gailkate]

I've been hoping someone with actual knowledge would comment here, but alas, 'tis just us morons. Suddenly Last Summer was about a man who took his young cousin traveling with him, certain that she wouldn't cramp his exploitative seduction of poor boys they met at hotels. She might even have been a lure. The cousin was Elizabeth Taylor, and the fine thing about the movie was how the story unfolds through her innocent-as-Jane's eyes.

It opens after the horrible event. She has been kept isolated by the wicked cousin's mother (Katherine Hepburn, absolutely brilliant), but a good psychiatrist helps her to face what happened on that tragic vacation. The boys found a way to entrap and turn on the predatory cousin and they did, indeed, kill him. I never thought of the eating part, I thought they clawed and tore at him like birds of prey. Very fitting and absolutely horrific.
I never read the play. Williams is so heartbreaking that I've only read some of his plays. Glass Menagerie pierced my soul. So I don't plan to read Last Summer, but I'd be glad if someone who has read it as an adult would enlighten us.

[hartlikeawheel]

Here's a joke I heard in college, fer gawd's sake, and as a married woman:

What's a cheap form of birth control?
Put a rock in his shoe and it will make him limp.

I laughed merrily along with the gang but I swear to you it was years before one day the light bulb came on!

The sex thing? Heard it in seventh grade and swore that there certainly had to be a more polite and modest way to make a baby than THAT! And I was never, ever going to do any such thing. That included all variations of "nasty" body comingling.

The first time a guy tried to French kiss me I just about gagged.

Face it - my folks didn't do an exactly good job at explaining these things.

All I heard from Mom was about my plumbing and that I wasn't going to like the rest of it but that it was my "duty."

Dad never said anything about sex. Scooted out of the room if the word was even mentioned.

I once went to a lecture for sex educators at the U and he said that we get mixed messages about sex in our culture:

Sex is wonderful - but don't do it.
Sex is dirty - save it for the one you love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And who would want to eat anything called a pu-pu platter?

[gailkate]

Yikes, the rock in shoe joke took me awhile.

I think it's hysterical that so many of us - girls, anyway - were so uninformed for so long. I think I've confessed to confusing and embarrassing our 6th grade teacher when he referred in social studies to people deciding to delay having kids and having smaller families. I asked very pointed questions about how people could just decide. Once you get married, God decides. Simple.

My mother told me decades later that she'd been terribly embarrassed when her mother enlightened her - since she'd already known for so long and talking to her mother about it made her squirm. I think the closer one was to farm life the more one figured out the obvious.

[doctork]

Growing up, I had similar sex education to the rest of you from my parents, though my aunt and grandmother could be bawdy and frank in my presence sometimes. Most enlightening.

For my own kids, well...they have all been in the Delivery Room with me at least a time or two, and often made hospital rounds with me on weekends, so they have never had any illusions about where babies come from. And then on long road trips, instead of "Don't Make Me Stop This Car" to punish misbehavior, I would just put my continuing medical education tapes in the tape deck. An hour of "Adolescent Sexuality," "Urological Pearls," "The Many Alternatives in Contraception," or "Treating Sexual Dysfunction" and they were good to go. ;D

[slb2]

doctork said:

And then on long road trips, instead of "Don't Make Me Stop This Car" to punish misbehavior, I would just put my continuing medical education tapes in the tape deck. An hour of "Adolescent Sexuality," "Urological Pearls," "The Many Alternatives in Contraception," or "Treating Sexual Dysfunction" and they were good to go. ;D

DocK, send me those tapes.

[brutus]

slb2 said:

doctork said:

And then on long road trips, instead of "Don't Make Me Stop This Car" to punish misbehavior, I would just put my continuing medical education tapes in the tape deck. An hour of "Adolescent Sexuality," "Urological Pearls," "The Many Alternatives in Contraception," or "Treating Sexual Dysfunction" and they were good to go. ;D

DocK, send me those tapes.

Why? Do you think you missed out on something???

~B~

[hartlikeawheel]

Kristin. You made me laugh out loud.

Along with that though, I wasn't nearly as clever as you, and during one of those extended trips from hell the, "Don't make me stop this car!" threat came up once too many times.

So I did. Right on the freeway. I truly hoped a trooper would happen along and scare them even if I got a ticket.

But nooooo. So then the question was, "Okay. Now what the heck am I supposed to do?" Didn't teach me that in Parenting 101.

[hartlikeawheel]

Returning to literature for a moment I often read from my old college English lit. books and just shake my head. I was a diligent student but now when I read I catch all kinds of subtleties that went right over my head in those days.

Time. It takes time and life experience I think.

[slb2]

brutus said:

slb2 said:

DocK, send me those tapes.

Why? Do you think you missed out on something???

~B~

I'd like to try the same technique on my kids.

[booklady]

"Urological Pearls"?!!

[doctork]

I will go see what tapes I still have in the basement. Now they send me CD's every week, I could send you those too. And....

Believe it or not -
One of my friends used to work in "corrections;" she was a prison psychologist. So for a long time, I sent her my tapes, a boxful every few months. She said the prisoners loved them, found them very educational. I was never quite sure what to make of that. Since I'm a family doc, the tapes cover the broad spectrum of medicine - orthopedics, heart disease, tropical medicine, office emergencies...

[Jane]

Hearing BL says she doesn't get science....I have no idea how anything works. Nothing. If you were to tell me that electricity comes to us on the shoes of tiny electricity fairies who live in the walls, I would probably just say, "Oh, yeah, I knew that." And if anyone tries to explain anything to me even remotely technological, I lose interest instantly. Like after the first word. I may look interested, but I am actually thinking about what I need to pick up at the grocery store.

[booklady]

Jane, that's exactly how I am. The only area of science I find remotely interesting is ecology. It is the hardest part of teaching, to learn the science and then try to teach it. I feel guilty about it, and keep trying to change the school organization so I teach only language arts and history, and some other poor schuck has to teach math and science.

[hartlikeawheel]

I can do biology. The rest is pretty foggy. The DNA/RNA stuff seems mystical to me.

Sometimes I play this game with myself - sort of a going back in time thing. I could talk about computers, telephones, TVs, something as simple as matches but there is no way I could show anyone how to do anything useful like that.

I doubt that the ancients would find John Donne or Matthew Arnold of much use unless I could convince them it was some sort of ritual chant.

When I worked with the "bad boys" at the State Hospital they used to try to gross me out with street slang and I never made it a "no-no." Instead I'd say something like, "Oh, you want to talk about intercourse, vaginas, etc., today," using all the clinical terms, and within a few minutes everybody's eyes would be on the floor and it would get very, very quiet in the room.

Now THEM'S "dirty" words on the street. Isn't that odd? Worked every time.

Funny thing. Sorta like Doc's method of calming her children in the car.

Occasionally it would turn into a useful discourse. Other times someone would decide they'd rather do their groupwork. Heh.

I could say that I don't get it but I have some good ideas about it.

[Gracie]

jane said:

Hearing BL says she doesn't get science....I have no idea how anything works. Nothing. If you were to tell me that electricity comes to us on the shoes of tiny electricity fairies who live in the walls, I would probably just say, "Oh, yeah, I knew that." And if anyone tries to explain anything to me even remotely technological, I lose interest instantly. Like after the first word. I may look interested, but I am actually thinking about what I need to pick up at the grocery store.

I'm sort of like that, myself....I remember reading once that a VW's engine was actually operated by little gnomes with eggbeaters. And I had no problem believing that.

[slb2]

I don't understand money. I did really well in my accounting class my senior year of college, but I don't get money.

My friend tells me to invest a tiny little chunk I've acquired in a CD. Okay. Like, should I invest in BeauSoleil's next CD? Yes. I'd like that. I can get that.

As a freelancer, I have to bill my clients. So, I do that. But then to keep track of who's paid me? It was a struggle to come up with an elementary procedure so that I would be able to bill and be paid without double jeopardy.

That's an excellent quality about Aceman. He invests our money well. He keeps track of it. He likes to read Kiplingers. He knows where the stuff is. We never argue about money.