The Suburban You (15 page)

You have seen this equipment in the windsurfing store, and because it is so specialized and so few people kite surf, the equipment is fabricated in very small quantities. Because this equipment is made in such small quantities, it is hugely expensive. A setup costs more than $7,500.

Your friend tells his new friend, the oil-and-lubrication kid, that if he bought a kite-surfer your friend would teach him how to use it. “With your ability, you would be all over this lake after a day,” your friend says encouragingly, thinking of his own interests as he makes this comment.

The next weekend at the beach—well, you should say that everyday is a “weekend” for this lubrication kid—he shows up fully equipped with his brand-new kite-surfer. With his unique equipment, which most Midwesterners have never seen before, the lubrication kid attracts a lot of attention. He attempts to answer the many questions that are asked of him about his new piece of equipment, but he really has no idea what the correct answers are. He has not figured out that he can just say anything and people will believe him. The only thing missing is his instructor and mentor.

Walking up the beach comes your friend Stephen. “Woo, what do you have there?” he asks. “I picked up a kite-surfer,” the lubrication kid says, not being encumbered by the burden of shopping for such an item on the weekend when he has weekday hours available for such an important task.

The oil-and-lubrication kid then asks, “So how do you use this thing? Show me how it works.” Your friend turns to the lubrication kid/kite-surfer and admits, “I have no idea. I have never tried a kite-surfer in my entire life, but let's figure it out.”

That day your clever friend takes his first ride on a kite-surfer, something he has been wanting to do without spending the money to buy one since he first saw an article on the sport in
Windsurfer
magazine.

Go to Your Block Party

Block parties are a pretty big deal in your suburb. Most of the people you know live on streets that have block parties. And most of them, yourself included, have this tendency to tell people who live on other blocks how great their block party is. What you mean, but are too polite to say, is that your block party is probably better than theirs, which really means that your neighbors are more fun and more interesting than theirs, meaning that the quality of your life is better than the quality of theirs. Block-party tangibles comprise things like who has their block party catered and by whom, who brings in the most elaborate games—like jump houses, petting zoos, and pony rides—and who has the most people attend. These events are discussed among friends who live on different streets and compete with one another in an unspoken competition.

You think that there can be no better block party than yours, because you think that you have the best neighbors in your suburb. However, in talking with your non-neighbor friends, you have difficulty block-party competing, because you cannot describe a set of tangibles at your block party that will compare to theirs. The boccie and the Ping-Pong that you played at your block party last year, while fun, will pale in comparison with the white-tablecloth, catered, and tented affair that they had, with the pony rides on the side. So you do not bring up this topic, and you know that when someone else does it will be their opportunity to tell you about how over-the-top their block is. It is in the middle of these conversations that you usually have to excuse yourself to go to the bathroom or get another drink.

But all this changes for you this year. This year, one of your neighbors, who is a drummer for Smashing Pumpkins, will perform at your block party with a group of his musician friends that you will refer to as Smashing Pumpkins, even though they technically aren't, because it sounds so much better when you discuss the topic with your neighbors. This is interesting for a few reasons. In this suburb of businesspeople, doctors, lawyers, and premature retirees, Matt is the only guy who has green hair and an eyebrow ring and who wears biker boots and tight leather pants. He is an artist, and artists are a rare breed in your suburb. What is also interesting is that Matt is the next-door neighbor of another artist, a guy who writes movies like
Inspector Gadget
,
George of the Jungle
,
The Burbs
, and others that you are not aware of. It's funny that the only two professional artists you know, who live in your suburb, live right next door to each other, and they tell you that this was not a planned event.

The block-party committee—yes, there is a committee, because very little is spontaneous in your suburb and most things are planned and organized by planning committees—has asked Matt if he would play music this year. He said yes, and this is big stuff because Smashing Pumpkins is the hottest rock band in the world. Word of this has spread fast among your neighbors. You have plenty of lead time on this one to initiate many conversations with your non-block friends. You are confident that, no matter what caterers anyone hires, how many ponies they bring in, how large the tent is, or whatever the theme of the jump house may be, you will have something cooler going on at your block party this year. You are confident that you will win any block-party competitive discussion this year.

On this particular July Saturday, late in the afternoon, your block will have its annual summer block party. You get barricades from your suburb's department of public works in the morning. Your first task is to barricade the street from any cars. The kids will emerge and begin riding their bikes and start playing volleyball, boccie, Ping-Pong, Frisbee, and all the other games that come out for this big event. You help with the games, the tables, and anything that you can. Matt is out, too, and he is setting up the speakers, the amplifiers, and the instruments. There are wires and wires, going from his house to the sidewalk in front of his house. It takes a couple of hours to set up this music equipment. Why, you think, as he is setting up this equipment, does it always take bands so long to get set up? Can't anyone figure out a faster way to do it?

Anyway, there it is, right on the sidewalk, a complete setup for the band, and not just any band but Smashing Pumpkins, one of the few bands that have emerged in the past thirty years that you have heard of. You are very appreciative of your good friend Matt for doing this. Because, when you think about it, what will be a block party for everyone else will be an evening of work for Matt; Matt performing at your block party would be the equivalent of you being invited to next year's block party to entertain your neighbors by, say, describing a clever and complicated deal structure that you have created to buy a building, at a fair price, from a seller who was not contemplating a sale.

Anticipation builds all day. Usually, when the block party starts at 3
P
.
M
., people start emerging from their houses at 3:30 or so. This year is different. It is 2:30 and the crowd is already bigger than it was last year. The talk at this event is almost all about Matt and his famous band. Matt is there and you hang out with him. You thank him for working when you will be partying and you try not to embarrass yourself by revealing to him how little you know about Smashing Pumpkins. You try to keep the conversation with Matt general, really general, so that it does not become obvious how ignorant you are about what it is that he does. Then you think that he probably knows less about what you do than you know about what he does, and that maybe it's not such a big deal after all. He may, in fact, be taking the same approach with you, now that you think of it.

The party is in full swing now and you are psyched. The games are rolling and the egg toss has just concluded. The food is coming out and it is nearing 8
P
.
M
., the hour when Matt and his famous band will begin playing.

However, the thing that you have observed about bands is that they never start playing when they say they will. Eight
P
.
M
. in your world means 8
P
.
M
. At about 8:35
P
.
M
. or so, four guys emerge with Matt out of Matt's house, with their work clothes on. They all wear mostly tight black clothes and seem overdressed for this warm July evening. One, not deterred by the ninety-degree evening with 90 percent humidity, wears a checkered flannel shirt. No wholesale suits in this crowd.

They approach their instruments and you can feel the excitement build among your neighbors and all the other people you do not recognize as your neighbors. Just as they start playing their first number, “Today,” probably the only song that you will recognize on this night, one of your son's friends comes running over to you. “Blake and Ryan just ran into each other on their bicycles,” your kid's friend says. “I think that Blake is hurt,” he concludes. You run over to where the kids have gathered and, sure enough, your kid, with his bike on the ground and his front wheel twisted, is there, along with his friend Ryan and Ryan's damaged bike.

Your kid has really hurt his arm and his knee is scraped up badly. He needs to go home to get an ice pack on his arm and take care of his cut. And someone needs to take him. You look around for a volunteer and realize that you are the man for this job. Going for the quick turnaround, you carry him home, quickly clean the cut, and put ice on his arm. He starts to feel a little better, but he does not want to go back to the block party. In your effort to persuade your son to return to the party, you tell him that this world-famous band is playing. “Smashing Pumpkins,” you tell him. “Haven't you heard of them?” It takes you fifteen minutes, but you convince him to go back.

You start heading over and you see your wife coming toward you with your daughter. “It is an hour past Bianca's bedtime and she is a wreck,” your wife announces to you. Hearing this makes your son want to go back inside, because he does not want his sister getting any special mom-attention that he is not. Your wife asks you to come along to help put the kids to bed. The music gets fainter as you get closer to your house.

You all go home and you volunteer to put your son to bed. You figure it will take you ten, maybe fifteen minutes max, then you are back on the street jamming with the Pumpkins. You go through your evening ritual: read, lights out, story, and Catholic prayer. He wants you to lie down with him, because the music is keeping him up. You do, and you fall asleep.

You wake up after receiving one of his elbows in your face as he turns in his sleep and you notice it is 2:13
A
.
M
. You slip into your bed, and as you are doing so you wake up your wife. You go to sleep; she cannot. You wake up the next morning and call your neighbors to hear how Matt and his famous band were. They cannot stop raving. “Wasn't that the most unbelievable night?” your friend says, not aware that you left one minute into the first set. “It sure was,” you respond.

One evening, a week later, you are at a non-block friend's house for a dinner party. You are asked about your block party, because he and his other guests are curious about this famous rocker playing with his band at your block party. This will be a question you will be asked frequently over the next year.

You tell them that it was one incredible night that you will never forget.

Learn About the High School Your Kids Will Attend

Because your social circle has been formed mostly around your elementary-school-aged kids' friends' parents, you know only a very few people who have kids in your local high school, and those people are ones who also have kids your kids' ages. Your wife is a little intimidated by the high school. It is big, with something like two thousand kids per graduating class. You have heard that it is intense. That the options and opportunities there are endless. You have heard that selecting classes is like selecting classes at a really good college. There are hundreds of clubs and the sports teams attract the best of the best. The culture, as you understand it, is that doing well is good (and all the kids want to do well), unlike where you went to high school, where if you wanted to do well you would conceal it.

This school is the reason that you and all your neighbors paid three times more for your homes than you would have if they were located in some other suburb, and also the reason that your taxes are the highest in the country and keep getting higher. You realize that the gene pool that this school draws from is one that would make Charles Darwin proud.

While there is something intimidating about this high school, ultimately you see mainly options and opportunities. And your job is to prepare your kids for this high school by exposing them to enough so that they begin to figure out what they want to do by the time they enter high school; you try to help them identify things at which they excel, because it is your sense that everyone excels at something at this high school.

You are at your block party and you meet a new neighbor. He has a son, whom you also meet for the first time at this block party, and who is in this high school that your kids will attend. He has just completed his sophomore year, and you talk to him and his dad to get some insight into the experience that you will have when your kids get to high school.

The sophomore tells you of the architecture classes that he is taking and the buildings that he has designed using a computer-aided design (CAD) program. He tells you that he has made a movie in one of his after-school clubs and that he is playing baseball, not on the regular team but on an intramural team, which he describes as fun. You presume that he is athletic and that in any other high school he might have been a starting shortstop, but at this high school, where the grooming for baseball begins with a second-grade Little League draft, he has no chance. He tells you that he has created his own website and that if you want to see his movie, his building, or some other cool stuff you can log on to www.bstauter.com. You do not have a website and you have not designed a building. You have not made a movie. You realize that this sophomore has outstripped you and you have two and a half decades on him. He has won this competition that only you know the two of you are having.