General News

So the big push for me this summer has been to spend less time on my phone. I know that that is not exactly the most daring thing to say. It seems like “less screen time” has replaced “lose weight” as the empty New Year’s resolutions no one is going to follow through on. But it is a true fact about my life. And as an older woman, I would contend that it is somewhat daring to admit. I feel like I can’t say a negative word about technology without some teen giving me a dirty look that says, “Well of course you would say that. You’re old. You probably know how to address an envelope.” 

For the record, it’s not that I think that all technology is bad. It is just that I think that we should start talking about phones the way we talk about sugar. It isn’t a problem if you are having a bowl of ice cream after dinner. That sounds lovely. But it is a problem if you have a bowl of ice cream every time you go to the bathroom. And without thinking about it! You just sit down and then, ten seconds later, realize that you are already scrolling through your bowl of ice cream. Sometimes, you find that you’ve been sitting on the couch for an hour, eating bowl after bowl of ice cream. And you aren’t even enjoying the ice cream. Because the ice cream algorithm isn’t calibrated to give you a good time. It’s calibrated to keep you eating as much ice cream as possible. Which is not the relationship you wanted with ice cream when you bought it. And when you finish, you feel dissatisfied and angry and tired and you don’t know whether that is really how you feel about the world or whether that is just the body’s natural reaction to consuming a pound of caramel swirl. 

So I deleted all of the social media apps from my phones. I still go on Twitter every morning for fifteen minutes while I drink a cup of coffee, but I use this desktop computer. It’s like driving a car on wagon wheels. I like the clunky feeling. It reminds me not to get too comfortable; that this website wants to eat me alive!

Why do I bring this up? Because I eventually found I needed a new fix; a pick me up to replace all those glowing pixels shouting into my eyes. So I started spending more and more time at Oberst Coffee House. I could pop in, get some caffeine, and bother friends while they were trying to get work done. Annoying people you love is almost better than caffeine. And I had plenty of time to talk now that I was off of Twitter. I realize that some people might have used this time to write a novel or get in better shape or maybe even help others, but that seemed like a waste. When I hear someone talk about giving up soda and losing twenty pounds, I’m unimpressed. When I gave up soda, I doubled down on pie. And I’m suspicious of people who don't. Besides, I’m building community. Community!

At Oberst’s this morning, I was excited to see Frankie--back from Loyola Chicago for the summer--posted up in the corner to give out tarot readings. I’ve been trying to run into Frankie for a few days now because she is involved in the hottest new story of the summer. 
Here’s what people know: Most nights this summer, about a half dozen or so of the college aged young adults have been sneaking off into the forest. It isn’t every night and it isn’t always the same group of people, but it does seem to keep happening. And whenever an older person asks them what they are doing, they blow them off with some variation on, “Hey, we’re just looking at the stars. Don’t worry about it so much.” And we’re not worried, but we’re dying to know what’s going on. I’m not an overly protective person, but I’m gossippy as hell. 

Last weekend, I had promised some of my friends that I would get to the bottom of the forest rendezvous. I was sitting around the fire behind the library with a handful of older adults when we saw Frankie sneaking off into the forest with a backpack. Adam tried to get her attention by waving at her, but she just waved back and kept walking into the forest. My husband said, “Waving is such a fickle enterprise. You never know whether someone wants your attention or is just saying hi.” I rolled my eyes and said, “That’s the third time today you’ve called something a fickle enterprise. We can’t go on like this.” 

I think it’s interesting just how much cache young adults get in our culture. If that had been me wandering into the forest, the best case scenario is that people think I’m hiding a dead body. More likely, they just think I’m senile or sleepwalking. I mean, here we were with weed, a fire, and our friends, and yet we were getting jealous of twenty year-olds stomping through weeds in the dark. Why? Just because they have more elastic skin? Fuck ‘em.

Adam was the first to share his theory. He said that they were probably playing spin the bottle. This was a very folksy and innocent hypothesis. It’s the sort of thing that would be happening in a movie where a character named Old Judge Wilson gets a telegraph and then breaks into song. By the time he finished the word bottle, we were all laughing. Adam tried to defend himself. He said that maybe they were fucking instead of kissing. But that goes too far in the other direction. That sounds like the sort of thing a pastor in jeans would tell his congregation was a TikTok trend before asking for money. 

Personally, I hate spin the bottle. The first and only time I’ve ever played was at a party where I had just made out for the first time with this guy I liked. We leave his bedroom, return to the party, and join the game. He spins the bottle and it points to me. He shrugs, looks sad, and says, “Oh, I guess.” So I don’t like spin the bottle. 

Monnie was the second to offer up her suggestion. She thought that the teens were going into the woods to do witchcraft. I took issue with this idea. It seemed so Reagan-y. So gross. I thought, “Can older folks really not talk about young people for five minutes without accusing them of communing with Satan? Are we going to start complaining about their rock and roll and their microwavable pizza rolls?” I asked her, “Why would they go into the woods to practice witchcraft? Who do they think we are? Catholic? We don’t give a shit.” At this point, Monnie started to go into detail about how we can connect with nature and forces beyond our perception. When she started talking about a Horned God and Mother Goddess, I realized that I was well outside of my wheelhouse and meekly retreated. 

That said, I still knew that Monnie was wrong. The crux of her argument rested on the idea that Frankie had started posting up in Oberst’s coffee house to offer tarot card readings. That much was true. That is how I ran into Frankie this morning. But if you’ve gotten a tarot reading from Frankie, you know that she isn’t connected to any higher powers. 

I am not about to make fun of tarot readings. I really have no feelings one way or the other about them. I am more than confident that there are some very talented and intelligent people who can do a very good job. But I’ve never had a tarot reading from someone who knew what they were doing. It has always been a friend who just got a new deck and is trying to use context clues to crazy glue a fortune together. “Huh, the death card. So maybe you should stop doing something?” I don’t mind. I’ve always enjoyed the readings my friends have cobbled together. It’s an excuse to go on about your problems with artsy conversation starters. 

Frankie has gone another direction entirely. She is giving incredibly practical and straightforward advice. A friend (who will remain nameless) went to Frankie to see whether she should break up with her partner. When she drew death, the lover, and the fool, she was more than a little shaken. But Frankie’s reading, bless her heart, was that the cards wanted her to start going to sleep and waking up around the same time each day to stabilize her circadian rhythms. I don’t remember what cards I drew, but she told me to get ten minutes of direct sunlight every morning. I don’t know whether she knows what she is doing is weird. I’m afraid to ask. But I find it incredibly charming. Either way, I don’t buy that Frankie’s a witch. 

A couple more people offered ideas, but nothing very convincing. I laughed at my friends and said, “You’re all missing the obvious answer. They’re just going out there to smoke pot. Is that really so hard to figure out?” But no one would believe me. Someone claimed we would smell it--which doesn’t make sense because we don’t know how far into the forest they are going. Someone else (who’s never even smoked weed!) claimed that we would have started to find “spent roaches” blowing with the leaves. The most convincing argument was just that there was no reason to hide it because no one would be mad if they found out. It is the same reason that no one had suggested that they were going into the woods to eat pizza; because pizza consumption is not a cause for controversy. 

My husband gallantly defended me. “Maybe the problem is that we are too chill about it. Maybe these young people would like to smoke without a stoned sexagenarian asking them whether it’s true that people share spells on TikTok.” Monnie stepped in to explain why she thought TikTok spells were bogus and I gratefully welcomed a new conversation topic. 

So face to face with Frankie, I took my opportunity to ask about the woods. She said, “Oh, you know…We just look at the stars. It’s nothing really.” 

I was prepared for this. 

“Look Frankie, I know I’m an older woman, but that doesn’t mean that I’m some staid prude who spends her whole day tut-tutting at passers by. I’ve lived a life. I’ve done wild things. Things your silly twenty-year old brain can’t even imagine. So just tell me what you’re doing. If you don’t want it in the quarterly, I won’t put it in the quarterly. But I need to know.” 

Frankie answered, “Honest to goodness, we bring a telescope and we look at the stars.”

“What is the world coming to when sober teenagers sneak off into the woods to do science projects?” 

“I mean, we’re smoking weed, too. Is that why everyone’s so worried?”