The Real World

                                  previously published in the Coastal Illustrated- July 25, 2012

   I’m a huge fan of "The Real World."  The MTV reality show, that is. It’s been a safe place for two decades where people (usually cute, single, and self-absorbed twenty somethings) “stop being polite and start being real.”

   I was there in the beginning, in New York, a young 20-year-old myself; a loyal couch side voyeur into the “colliding worlds” of seven strangers living in an ultra-hip SOHO apartment rent free where they talked “smack” and tried to bring about world peace.

   I was sitting right there with Kevin, the angst-ridden poet, and the Jersey City, beeper wearing, rap record seeker named Heather B. I watched sweet, small town, Southern Julie traverse the scary Manhattan landscape in her schrunchie and acid-washed jeans.

   I was there, on Lombard Street (the most crooked street in the world), a junior at Georgia, watching the cast of "Real World: San Francisco" tackle issues such as HIV, post-graduation post-partum, and the trials and tribulations of living with a bicycle messenger, named Puck, with no redeeming social skills whatsoever and the nasty habit of putting the peanut butter knife back in the jar after he licked it clean.

   And here I find myself today, 20 years later, still fascinated as I watch seven strangers live together in a million dollar home, on a private island, in the Virgin Islands, you know, “being real," soaking up the sun and drinking rum punch like bonefide VIPS.

   Everything is the same, year after year after year. Except, I have come to realize: me.

   “Why are you yelling at the TV?” my husband asks from the kitchen where I like to pretend he is loading the dinner dishes into the dishwasher instead of downing Captain Crunch like he is leaving for a seven-month voyage out to sea. “You’ll wake up the kids.”

   “Look! Just look at this,” I plead, pausing the show. “Tell me, for the love of all things wise and wonderful…….…tell me. Tell me what do you see?”

   “A redheaded skinny dude passed out on a weird looking swing and a girl in a bikini putting peanut butter on him.”

   “Ughhhh! A weird looking swing?” I hop up from my yellow chair, wilding pointing at it frozen in the frame. “It’s a custom made porch swing made out of an old refurbished row boat with custom cushions on a custom made settee! That’s probably worth eight grand! What kind of person rubs peanut butter all over an 8,000 dollar swing?!”

   He didn’t know the answer either. It may be time to stop watching the “real world,” or at least that would be the advice I would get from my OB….with my high blood pressure and all that. But seriously y’all, it gets harder and harder to watch two 25 year olds banter back and forth about how unfair life is while drinking vodka-laced Hawaiian Punch on a four hundred count, perfectly white, perfectly pristine, silk duvet and matching European shams encasing the finest of Egyptian cotton.

  Yes, get over it, life is unfair…..and so is a $2,000 dollar comforter set that no matter how many times they tell you is pre-treated, will never come back from the dry cleaners stain free.

 See, the real, “real” world is not what you ever thought it would turn out to be. For me, this is a rather perplexing thought as I prepare my oldest to leave the safety of the candy-colored tiled path of elementary school and straight into the scary scuffed up, smelly sneaker, locker clanging hall of middle school-ville.

 

  What words of wisdom do I give her? How to I make the crushing blows of faltering, not fitting in, fear of failure, not hurt so much? How do you encourage and guide your child to adulthood while preparing them for life’s let downs?

  We were all told the same things: the world’s our oyster….only we never really knew that literally, and figuratively, the price would cost as much as the market could bear.

  We were informed of “Oh, all the places you’ll go” but most of us at the time we’re not thinking a ranch in the suburbs with a mortgage, two car payments and student loans.

  Even those words we all absorbed as adolescents like a rich wine, the ones about being your own individual and “taking the road least traveled by” and that would make all the difference wasn’t even…”sigh”…. the poets intended meaning. 

  If we had read it more closely and with greater perspective, the poem would read as the poet intended; a nostalgic view of a man looking back on his life and contemplating the weight of the choices he made and do they really matter. The path was already chosen; you cannot go back and choose again.

  I have been thinking about that a lot this past week as I write this from a porch overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee and the woods of North Eastern New Hampshire. Especially, as I prepare my daughter for the first days of middle school come August.

  We have hiked these woods together, the same ones our poet Robert Frost walked for most of his adult life, since she was two years old. There is something eerily majestic and wise and dangerous about them. No, no two paths ever look the exact same. But there are tricky similarities that make you pause and wonder what you might miss depending on the path you’ve taken. As Frost tells us, there is not much you can do fretting about it; choice is an inevitability, a sure bed rock of life like the passing of time.

  Sometimes, the path turns rocky and steep in a hurry and we have no choice but to turn back. I hope she realizes that to retrace ones steps does not equate to failure. It stands for being smart and safe about her choices.

  Other times, the path is not particularly challenging and quiet and sparse. I hope she learns to not be disappointed but to keep going, you never know what you will find -a gentle pond, a great river, a regal mountain- if you stay the course.

  But always, no matter what mossy, rocky, footstep trodden path she takes…..the road will always lead home. And I will always be waiting.

  As adults, we learn to live with regret. Toss it around, shake it out and then put it back up, in its rightful place, out of reach. For a child, regret is a foreign concept too soon learned… for their own good.

  I only wish she learns the real world is what she makes of it. Hopefully, for her, that will make all the difference.