(Warning: spicy language coming soon.) Having recently dipped my toe into the ocean of interior design, I loved a friend’s link, on Facebook, to a site called F**k Your Noguchi Coffee Table. (You can even buy a limited edition print of that sentiment, at fuckyournoguchicoffeetable.com). The site openly mocks every hot trend in decor, from wall-mounted antlers to Moroccan poufs to chalkboard walls and garlands. I was simultaneously laughing and stealing design ideas.

The “frame cluster” is, apparently, so ubiquitous that it has a whole day devoted to its mocking: Frame Cluster Friday. It is with that in mind that I wrote the following:

In our new house there is a vast expanse of wall in the second-floor hallway; I knew as soon as I saw it that my dream of having a frame cluster of family photos would finally be realized. It was the first decorating project I undertook when we moved it and in my excitement I skipped over all the planning steps — like, if you’re from the Martha Stewart school, tracing all the frames and then taping your traced, paper frames to the wall until you get the perfect layout.

I’m not from that school, so I got a hammer and started bashing nails into the brand new sheetrock as much husband looked on and cringed. Fortunately — although this is not always the case — my enthusiasm paid off: the hallway of photos is now my favorite part of the house. Every single day I look closely at at least a few of the photos; each one is a window into a story or memory from long ago or just recently. Some days I walk down the hall holding Hugh and show him photos of family members who, sadly, he will never meet.

“This is JJ,” I say, pointing to a photo of my mom before she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. She looks so young and happy at my brother’s college graduation; it seems impossible that I can’t pick up the phone and call her right now to see what she’s doing.

“This is Grandma Cecilia,” I say, as I point to an old black-and-white photo of David’s mother when she was a teenager in Ecuador, her hair long and in a side-braid. In another photo, Cecilia looks so happy to be holding my daughter when CJ was a baby. Cecilia was a talented seamstress and we assumed she would be making adorable dresses for CJ for years to come.

David and I both lost our mothers unexpectedly, when they were only in their early sixties, and it’s easy to feel angry and robbed of memories. But I more frequently smile when I walk by the wall of photos. The happy photos of my mom and David’s are constant reminders of all the fun we had before life took unexpected turns.

CJ loves the wall, too — she loves to see herself as a baby and to hear stories (of course, she is six, so her requests are usually along the lines of “Tell me about the time I pooped in the bathtub!”). She also likes to point out Daddo’s evolution from hair to no hair, and my ever-changing hair color: much-too-bright red when I was married, way-too-light blond for years after, and now brown in the most recent photos, taken at my brother’s wedding last summer to the lovely Briana.

Of course, when I look at that recent group wedding photo I cannot help but notice that my husband and I are a collective 35 pounds heavier in the photo than we are now. I think about jokingly telling my brother and sister-in-law that we need to get everyone together again, on the golf course overlooking the ocean way up in Maine, in their same outfits, to just really quickly snap a new photo! But the bride and groom look amazing, and that is what counts.

I could take the photo down and replace it with one where we look great — but where’s the fun in that? These photos are memories of real life — sometimes we’re chubby and sometimes we have bad haircuts! If you want to look at a wall of perfectly coiffed heads, go to the nearest bank or country club and check out the Board of Directors wall.

If, on the other hand, you want to see an authentic 70’s-style photo of my brother and I, clearly sporting home ‘dos and looking seriously rough around the edges, come on over. You can find us in between the black-and-white photo of Lucy, my beloved English bulldog (RIP), and the photo of CJ wearing her Big Sister t-shirt and holding tiny Hugh right after he came home.

“Look at his little chicken legs!” she says every time we look at the photo. Good thing we have that photo — just eight months later, Hugh is sporting some serious chub on those same legs. I must remember to get a photo of that, too.

So it is with gratitude that I say these four words: F**k my frame cluster. And now I must bid you farewell. This terrarium in a vintage cake stand isn’t going to assemble itself.

I know this for sure: Beth and I were headed to Domsey’s, a huge vintage clothing warehouse in a section of Brooklyn that was considered seriously sketchy at the time but is probably now filled with hipster parents pushing those strollers that look like a hollowed out egg with a baby perched inside. Other than going to Domsey’s there was never an occasion to ride on these unfamiliar trains that stopped at places like Cypress Hills and ultimately, JFK airport. It was a relatively short ride but it felt like we were traveling to a faraway place, totally unlike Manhattan. That was, of course, part of the fun.

As usual, Beth and I were chattin’ it up — we liked to dissect situations and people and say to each other what we wished we’d said to others but hadn’t thought of at the time. We talked about guys, music, fashion, friends, movies, who was there and who wasn’t there, who slept with whom, our lack of cash and what we could do about it, and who was having the next party or who could put us on a list somewhere. We were young and cute and confident.

Beth and I were amusing each other with our stories to such an extent that we realized with surprise that not only was the train stopped in the tunnel (this was not unusual in the least), but we appeared to be the only ones on the train (this was odd). How we could have failed to notice that every single other person had exited the train is beyond me. We stood up and each walked to one end of the car, to see if the doors were open. Both were locked. There was no one in either of the other cars that we could see, or beyond that.

It was clear, then: this train was not just stopped at a signal, it was stopped. As in, not going to move. I had poked fun at my roommate, our friend Clare, for getting so into her New Yorker article while riding the subway home from work that she ended up at Coney Island on more than one occasion. Now I understood. Beth and I sat back down on the bench and looked at each other.

As I write this now, in my kitchen in 2012, I can feel myself becoming physically uncomfortable. Even twenty years later, the thought of being trapped in one subway car of a seemingly empty train makes me feel claustrophobic and anxious. My neck muscles are tightening.

I believe this one event has stuck with me for so long is because it foreshadows the intense, debilitating claustrophobia that I was to develop a few years later, when I would not have agreed to even take the train to Domsey’s, or anywhere else that was not 100% essential, like work and home. Even these trips could take me hours, as I would take each train for just one stop, and then get off and wait for the next — if you have eight or ten stops to go, this quickly becomes an untenable way to travel. I became ritualistic, sitting only in certain seats and waiting for the next train if “my seat” was occupied when the train doors opened at my stop.

So you would think that maybe I had a nervous breakdown on that one summer day in 1991 with Beth. I can almost picture myself banging on the doors, screaming for someone to come, and then sitting on the floor and hyperventilating. But what we did that day was nothing along those lines. What we did, without giving it any thought, was this: We started laughing. Uncontrollably. In between our hysterical laughter we gasped things like, “Holy shit!” and “What the hell do we do?” And then more laughter.

After who knows how long — it could have been three minutes or thirty — a conductor opened the door to the car and stopped short when he saw us.

“LADIES!” he barked at us. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!” We laughed as we tried to answer him.

“This train is out of commission! You didn’t hear ANY OF THE MESSAGES?” We laughed as we shook our heads. He very angrily used his walkie-talkie to call someone else. “We got a couple girls on the train back here. We need to pull into the station.”

He walked us through the empty and eerily quiet cars, unlocking the doors as we went, until we were in the first car of the train, which had pulled only a few feet into the station, just enough for us to get out. He shook his head in annoyance as he walked away.

As for us, we waited for the next train and continued on to Domsey’s, undeterred. In fact, I think I bought my cream-colored leather jacket that day. I wore it constantly, until it was stolen from a club one night when I was having too much fun to really care.

In my case it is, and has been for much of my life, writing.

If I could find a way to write for even one eighth of the time that I think about writing — even one sixteenth! — I would be prolific. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of updating my blog. (And yet, the most recent post is dated January 21.) And then there are the personal essays and the memoir, all of which have been “in progress” for years now.

I know, I know, I have a baby — how can you write a book when you have a baby?! Trust me, I do regularly use Hugh as an excuse for why I can’t do many things! (A very cute, chunky monkey of an excuse.) But come on — when CJ was a baby I ran a business; I should be able to write 500 words every now and then.

With these thoughts in mind, today I sat outside at Panera, trying to make good on my promise that on the days that Hugh is with a sitter for a few hours, I will do one of two things: write or exercise. (In addition to the other crap I need to do.)

As for why I sat on the patio at Panera, next to unscenic and loud Route 113, instead of at a hipper coffee shop where I could stare out at the ocean, that’s easy: BECAUSE THEN I WOULD STARE AT THE OCEAN. It felt safer cheesy, chain-y Panera. Or at least so I thought.

At this point we can cue that loud noise of a needle scratching over a record.  About ten minutes into my writing, a pleasant-seeming man with a healthy Boston accent opened his new tablet and asked if I could possibly show him how to get to his gmail account. It all seemed so simple.

I quickly got him to gmail.com and sent him back to his table to enter his email address. After a few minutes I heard him sighing and angrily pressing buttons with his pointer finger and I knew we were headed down a bad path.

“Having some trouble?” I said.

He gave me his name (as part of the email account we were trying to reach) and I immediately recognized that he is the Newbuyport Building Inspector — small town living at its finest. I told him as much, and he asked if I lived in town. I knew that he would know my house, which we purchased from a builder just seven months ago; the house was taken down to the foundation and studs and rebuilt, so I know there were lots of permits involved.

As we’ve heard from our neighbors, the B.I. confirmed that our house, pre-renovation, was 100% Crazy Town. Hoarders owned the place and were sleeping in the kitchen and using propane for heat. Scaffolding had been up on the front of the house for the better part of a decade. The yard was infested with skunks. It took three months just to clear everything out, and at one point the B.I. thought the whole house was going to cave in.

It’s a pretty nice place now, so we had a laugh. He told me who to go see in City Hall, a man who might have some photos of the house “before.” I’ll probably do it; it would be fun to see.

We never did get him online at Panera. By the time our chat was finished and he headed out, I realized that I wasn’t going to get any real writing done today. But sometimes it’s the exercise more than the final product, the journey rather than the destination.

And that brings me to this moment, when I am finishing up my iced coffee and trying to resist the urge to do a weird chair dance to this horrible, cheesy jazz-lite music that truly can’t be what anyone would choose to hear. I feel for the people who work here; they must at least consider jamming a plastic fork into their ear drums after this mix has looped a few times.

It’s almost time to go home and let the sitter go, then walk to school to get CJ. It’s a gorgeous day so we’ll probably loiter in the playground. Then it’s the most hectic time of the day: dinner, baths, and bedtime routines. After that, I’ll check Ye Olde Facebook, play some Words with Friends, chat with David, and perhaps have a glass of red. (“Perhaps.” Hahaha. I crack myself up.) And then, suddenly, I will be overcome with fatigue and crawl into bed to read a few pages of The Forgotten Garden before falling asleep.

But at least for some of that time, I will be thinking about writing. As for actual writing, realistically, that will be on Thursday at the earliest. And that is okay. It has to be.

Over a year ago, I gave away all my CDs to friends; I had already copied the music to my computer and didn’t want the physical objects taking up space and collecting dust anymore. So did I listen to music less frequently after that? Nope. Way more, in fact, and more often, via Pandora and Rdio on Sonos. (Right now I’m listening to my Smiths station: “Sixteen, clumsy and shy, I went to London and I…” Anyone?)

Somehow, though, I felt differently about giving away my books. I’d donate the new fiction that I’d been lured into buying, but nothing from The Shelves, which housed the books that had survived the purges and the re-locations of the past twenty-plus years.

But, this time, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to get rid of all of my books. I realize that for some people this is like saying that I’m pretty sure I’m going to leave my kids in an Arby’s parking lot. But I just don’t think I need the physical objects anymore (the books, that is, not the kids. I’m going to hang on to the kids for a while). The chances of me sitting down to page through The Autobiography of Malcolm X at this point in my life are, uh, slim. But I still remember the story and the impact it had on me.

The books that have survived this long have (cheese alert) become a part of me. And now I can send them out into the world to, hopefully, impact someone else. Bye-bye, books! (I’m now picturing each book carrying a little hobo-style stick with a bandana at the end. Why do I do stuff like that?)

But first, if you’ll bear with me, a few goodbyes.

Goodbye, Don DeLillo’s White Noise. I read you on the subway in New York and laughed out loud and didn’t care at all (no one else cared, either — yay, New York!). I made Clare Bundy Haygood read you  – or was it the other way around? — and then we referred to the “airborne toxic event” and “the point of Babette” in daily conversation, cracking ourselves up.

Goodbye, Leviathan, The Music of Chance, and all the other Paul Auster books I read during my Postmodern Existential Phase. I seriously could not have been postmodern or existential without you. Oh, those were heady days!

Goodbye, Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer. You came at exactly the right time, when I wanted to leave postmodern behind and enter gritty realism, you know? I read you all in one day and night, sitting in my big armchair on my apartment on West 95th Street, after which I sat, stunned.

Goodbye, Of Woman Born, by Adrienne Rich. Dog-eared and yellowed, you survived so many book purges. You are a symbol of my life at Vassar College all those years ago. Having transferred from a more conservative, Southern school, I could hardly believe the co-ed bathrooms, lesbian clubs, and woman power you showed me. (It wasn’t all about that stuff — we also drank tons of beer and danced to Soul II Soul and edited movies on real film and drove to New York to eat Indian food and talked and talked and talked… I loved every minute of it.)

Goodbye, Casino, by Nicholas Pileggi. The book on which Martin Scorsese’s film was based is not a favorite of mine per se, but it has survived the years due to the personal inscription to me from Nick Pileggi: “To Lise, who always remembered the cards at the Drake.” Explanation: This was when I worked for Marty and he and Nick needed a space where they could transform the story to movie scenes, via index cards (Marty is super old school) so I rented a room at the Drake Hotel, across from our office in midtown. I was responsible for the cards, which by the end, wound around the room like a long Candyland path. So, if you liked that movie, you’re welcome; I could have really messed that shit up.

Goodbye, Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt. Man, you were a freakin’ downer, I gotta be honest. Yowsa. But you spurred my interest (and the world’s) in memoir, and that love has stayed with me since then. (I am, in fact, trying to write a memoir, which I suspect is something I’ll be saying for the next twenty years.)

Goodbye, Of Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett. Goodbye, What Is the What?, by Dave Eggers. Goodbye, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien. You made me think about war in terms of the individual people involved. I don’t think I had done that before.

Goodbye, American Films of the 1970s, by Peter Lev. You provided inspiration for the class of the same name that I taught at Suffolk University in Boston. We watched Easy Rider, Badlands, Chinatown — ahhh! So good! Must watch one soon.

And, finally, goodbye, Raising Your Spirited Child, by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka. Actually, maybe I’ll keep that one. A-hem.

The books are packed now, and I’d be lying if I said I’m not just a little sad. I think I’ll hold on to the boxes for a couple of days. It’s not that I think I will change my mind. I’m just thinking that one of you might call and ask if you can pick them up.

Image by aafromaa via Flickr

I know many people look for beach and vacation reading during the summer so it seems like a good time for my first — and, let’s be honest, probably my last — edition of Pulp Picks.

Personally, I am most excited for Ann Patchett’s latest, State of Wonder. I loved Bel Canto and Truth and Beauty, and even her less stellar efforts, like Run, kept me hooked. I am, in fact, so excited about State of Wonder that I keep putting it off; I guess I don’t want to have the best book of the summer completed by early July. So, here’s what I’ve been reading in the meantime:

Cover via Amazon

It’s time for me to come out of the Kindle closet.

Yes! I have a Kindle! I know, I know — I didn’t tell you. Don’t feel bad, I didn’t really tell anyone, but I’ve been reading books pretty much exclusively on my Kindle since I received it as a surprise Christmas gift from my husband. He was definitely more excited than I was as I opened it; it seemed, on paper at least, to be the perfect gift for me — a life-long, avid reader!

And yet, the Kindle made me uncomfortable from the start.

Image via Wikipedia

A caveat: If the following incident had occurred on a different week, it very likely would not have been a big deal. But for various reasons, this was a Difficult Week.* Strange behavior issues with the five-and-a-half-year-old led to insecurities in the parenting department. If you’re a parent, I’m certain you’ve had one of those days (months?) where you ask yourself, “Who the hell is in charge here?!” And then you realize, with some discomfort, that it is you. This was one of those days.

Let’s start here: A few days ago was St. Patrick’s Day. In my house, this usually means that we dig through drawers and closets to find mismatched green items, and then we wear whatever we find. Fun, right? Well, apparently, in other houses, leprechaun traps are set out the night before. And, although actual leprechauns are rarely, if ever, actually caught, those cute little guys leave behind treats, gifts, and notes! Sometimes, a little shred of green clothing or even a tiny leprechaun hat is found at the scene! I even heard that if you leave a potato under your pillow, the leprechauns will take the potato and leave you money.

Not knowing any of this, we sent our poor child off to school with nothing to show for herself but a green t-shirt. And it gets even worse. But can I first say to the parents of the world: Can we please get our shit together and be on the same page with this stuff?! Between that damn “elf on the shelf” at Christmastime and now this, I feel like we need some kind of holiday manual. So, tell me: Is there anything I need to know about Flag Day?  (Also, please insert rant about “getting back to the real meaning of holidays blah blah commercialization blah does every holiday have to be about treats and presents blah blah” here.)

So, having spent the whole St. Patrick’s Day at school hearing about all her friends’ leprechaun traps, my kid decided to build her own leprechaun trap that night. She was undeterred by my comment that “I think we were supposed to do this last night. I don’t think they come out again until next year.” Trap set, she went to bed — and I went to CVS, to buy…anything green, and preferably something on sale since it was 8pm and St. Patrick’s Day was basically over (unless of course you were at a bar, where it was just getting started).

The next morning, March 18th, I was hoping she’d go off to school without remembering the trap and we could put this behind us for a year. Of course, she walked in the dining room and, after a long pause, I heard, “Mum! There was a leprechaun in here!” She sounded so excited. I felt uneasy, still not comfortable with this whole situation.

“Look! He left me a note! It says, ‘Maybe next year you’ll catch me!’ And he left me some stickers!” I couldn’t even deal. My husband went in to do the “Wow!”s.

About ten minutes later, when she and I were alone, she dropped the bomb: “Mum? Was there really a leprechaun here, or did you leave that stuff in there?”

Shit.

“Mum?”

I had only two sips of coffee in me, definitely not enough to be facing a Parental Moment. “Well, what do you think?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I want you to tell me. Did you leave the stuff?”

Very quickly, I thought, “Okay, we’re talking about leprechauns; they are way low in the Pretend Holiday Characters food chain. This is not a big deal!” I decided to tell my daughter the truth. The truth! That is (almost) always the right thing to tell someone, right?

“Yes. I left the stuff. I’m not sure leprechauns are real, but I wanted you to have some fun St. Patrick’s Day treats anyway.”

“Oh.” She paused, as all the fun and excitement from a few minutes prior exited the room. “How did you write so messy?”

“I used my left hand.”

“Oh.” Even longer pause. “Leprechauns ARE real, though. Maybe I will catch one next year.”

“Are you sure they’re real?”

“Yes.”

And that’s when I knew I had made the wrong decision. I should have lied. Why? Because she wants to believe. The kid had a rough year, and she wants to believe that a tiny man wearing a tiny green hat snuck into her house and left her a present.

And, really — of all the reasons that adults are in therapy to work through childhood issues, have you ever heard ANYONE say that they are mad at their parents for letting them believe, when they were five years old, in leprechauns, or the Tooth Fairy, or even Santa Claus? Do any of you harbor anger towards your parents for having lied, at some point, to keep you believing? (If they told you when you were 27 that Santa was real, I am with you: Not cool.)

I saw my daughter later that day in her classroom, too, when I went in to volunteer. She had her four-leafed clover stickers and she was giving one to a friend. She came over to say hello and I bent down to whisper in her ear.

“Are you mad at me about the leprechaun stuff?” I asked.

“No.”

“If you want, we can pretend that there was a leprechaun,” I said.

She smiled. I smiled. But mine was a sad smile. I don’t know what made her even think to question the magic on that particular day — I had carefully removed price tags and buried the CVS bag in the trash — but I’m glad that, despite my efforts to the contrary, she decided to still believe in leprechauns. I wish we could go back in time. I would say, “What?! No! I wasn’t even in that room!” and she would go to school with her own tale of the leprechaun that got away.

And now, I can only hope that I haven’t opened the door for Santa’s untimely demise.

* In light of the horrific events in Japan this week, calling my week “difficult” gave me pause. You will have to trust me when I say that it is not just this leprechaun nonsense that messed up my head; there were other issues and, in fact, they were all framed by this almost-impossible-to-grasp situation in Japan, which caused serious turmoil in the brain and a heaviness in the heart.

Also, stupid Daylight Savings didn’t help.

The reason I love Pandora is straightforward: It makes it easier and faster for me to hear good (as defined by me) music. I can listen to Pandora for hours in my car, with few commercial interruptions. I can put it on at home (we have Sonos, which I also love) when guests are arriving, and I don’t have to think about music again for the rest of the night; and, if things start out mellow but then get more upbeat, I can just quickly change the station. And back before we were buried under yards of snow, when I used to run/walk a few miles most mornings, I could crank the Kanye West or even Rihanna to get myself moving. All easy, all free.

But lately I’ve noticed a couple of flaws in the system. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Pandora — as far as I’m concerned, it totally delivers on its promise. The issues I’m having are bigger than Pandora, more about how the way we listen to music is changing.

For example, the experience of listening to an entire album has been, for the most part, lost. With iTunes and MP3 players and iPod shuffle, we’ve been headed the way of the single for a long time. I can’t remember the last album (do we still use that word? LP?) I listened to from start to finish (not that I would have time to do this anymore, but still). Here’s the example that just popped into my head: A Tribe Called Quest’s “People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.” Even the title gives you a clue as to how the songs form a journey with a beginning, middle and end.

Obviously, the whole premise of Pandora is based on analyzing each piece of music (Music Genome Project) as it stands alone. But, the classification system sometimes does too good of a job of finding similar music. While I often appreciate that Arcade Fire leads to Iron and Wine, which leads to Andrew Bird and Belle and Sebastian and the Nationals and so on, I find myself wishing something totally unexpected would pop up.

It’s like when you’re listening to an exceptional college radio station and a skillful DJ will throw out a crazy mix of music, jumping from reggae to indie to rap to alt.folk in a way that makes perfect sense. (This can also be infuriating about college stations — just when you are really getting into the mix a new DJ comes in to play “all Frank Sinatra!” or “all a capella!”)

Musical nirvana can also be achieved with the very best of mix CDs or, in rare cases, the Quickmix option on Pandora, or the “shuffle” mode on your iPod. More frequently, though, these options lead to some bad situations, like the Violent Femmes followed by, say Laurie Berkner. Not good. (Note to self: Delete Laurie Berkner!)

I’ve also noticed that Pandora does not seem to do much cross-decade programming — to be fair, neither does traditional radio. I mean, do kids today even know that all their favorite alternative-rock-or-whatever-it’s-called bands are a derivation of 80s bands like Bauhaus, Echo and the Bunnymen, New Order, The Church?

I guess what I’m saying is, I love Pandora — except when I don’t. And despite the amazing scope of the Music Genome Project, there is still something to be said for having an actual person — a friend, DJ, or even a couple of strangers talking on the train — help choose your music.

Consider this metaphor: Say there was a Pandora-like program for visual art, which categorized millions of pieces of art and then presented you with art that was based on what you said you like. If you said that you liked Kandinsky, you’d be presented with other Russian artists from the early 1900s, and other artists who use bold color and images, some abstract landscapes, and so on. But it is very unlikely that you’d be presented with a contemporary video artist or an African folk artist, and in that way, your choices have been greatly diminished.

So, I will continue to listen to and love Pandora and I hope you will, too. But keep sharing your recommendations, so we don’t fall into the trap of letting technology tell us what we like. As anyone who’s used an online dating service knows, just because you are “matched,” doesn’t mean you are a match.

I’m off to create some new stations. Suggestions? I’d love to hear what you are listening to, and how you listen to it. By the way, here’s a link to one of the most fun musical line-ups I’ve recently experienced, NPR and All Songs Considered’s Best Songs of 2010.

Really? You clicked on a link that said “I don’t know what the hell I am talking about?” Interesting. I’m not sure what that says about you.

Let’s play make believe.

Imagine for a minute that you are a gas station owner — let’s just say that you’re located in a town north of Boston and that you had owned and run a Getty station for almost twenty years when a corporate deal that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time converted your Getty station to a BP station. It’s just a name, right? No one will care, you told yourself.

Just for the hell of it, let’s say your name is Jim Daaboul. And let’s say that this week is when the change-over to BP is occurring — a switch that’s been in the works for almost two years –at your gas station. What do you think you would be feeling as the BP signs were hoisted over your gas station amidst the coverage of BP’s two-month old, and ongoing, disaster in the Gulf of Mexico?

I’m guessing you’d be thinking something along the lines of this: “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.”

Okay, now stop the pretending — what are you, five years old!? No need to pretend, anyway — Jim Daaboul is a real person! He owns a gas station in my town; you can read the local paper’s story here. Prior to reading his story I had been a de facto participant in the BP boycott. (It was de facto in that I never really patronized BP to begin with. So, Take that, BP! I am going to continue to not go to your gas station! Powerful stuff.)

The other reason I haven’t been fully on board with the boycott is that if I am voting against BP, then I feel like I am voting for whichever company I go to instead. So, please tell me, which oil company is the Good Guy? Have you done all your research and do you feel confident with your vote?

And, lastly, without removing any of the enormous and deserved blame on BP, I would also like to state the obvious, which is that oil companies exist because we as a nation use a royal ass-load of oil. So, it’s nice that we have a Bad Guy now — and they are definitely the Bad Guy! — but let’s just recognize that it’s a complicated situation. ‘Lotta ins, ‘lotta outs.

Meanwhile, north of Boston, there’s this guy, Jim. In the article Jim says,”I’m just a small guy. Customers need to look at the service, not the sign.” He also points out that BP supplies oil to other big-name companies, too. So you could be patronizing a Mobil station and filling your tank with BP fuel.

So what’s a girl like me, who likes to do the right thing, to do? This gas station is about 1/2 mile from my house. I drove by yesterday, the day this story was published, and I looked over to see a man (I’m guessing it was Jim) pumping gas; oddly, he looked up and we made and held eye contact as I drove by. It didn’t feel accidental. It felt like he was standing out there, at his shiny new BP station, and purposely looking at the drivers of passing cars, just waiting for someone to yell something obscene or to tell him that he should be ashamed.

I didn’t honk my horn or yell, “BP kills birds and ruins lives!” (Both of which is true.) But I also didn’t yell, “I support you, Jim!” And I didn’t stop to get gas, either. I looked away.

(Postscript, added March 2012: I recently received an angry email from someone who was upset that I would “lampoon” the situation and “rip on someone who is easy prey.” So, in case there are others who also had this wild misreading of what I had written, I would like to state clearly that the owners of the BP station in Amesbury, MA, seem like lovely and hardworking individuals and I never meant to suggest otherwise. This essay was about the attempt to separate the enormous and obvious wrongdoing of BP, the corporation, from one small businessman who was working under a giant BP logo. It was about me personally working through that, and my initial ambivalence. In the end, not only did I decide to patronize the station on a regular basis, including car inspections, but I also convinced more than one friend to stop “boycotting BP,” when they were really boycotting one hardworking individual who had a case of bad timing. Personally, I thought my ambivalence came through pretty clearly in the original post — and I thought I did a decent job of illustrating the affect of the situation on someone in my own town — but after getting totally railed on I figured I’d post a clarification. The End.)