Was Earl right? Reconsidering the crazy man who said there was a microchip in my daughter's brain

We celebrated Emma's 21st birthday this week. Possibly I'm a bit worn down, but I'm beginning to wonder if Earl had a point.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2011

The Communist Microchip in my Daughter’s Brain, or, what I learned about Sino-U.S. relations from a guy with a topographical sculpture of Hawaii on his office wall

Back when I'd let my subscription for Ms. magazine lapse and picked up twelve issues of Fast Company instead (plus bonus tote bag!), I worked as a corporate drone in a totally made-up sector of American capitalism, euphemistically referred to as “business services." (Or, when the computer geeks tagged along, “consulting.”) An essential part of these "services" involved going to lunch with out-of-town customers, usually with a ratio ten of us to every one of them. We really liked that power-in-numbers thing. Also, floppy neckerchiefs and big earrings, but just for the women.

At lunch, the ten of us would take turns spouting marketing department aphorisms like, “It’s the people who make the difference at our company” and “When customers hear about all we can do for them, they say, ‘I had no idea.’” The other nine of us would nod along in time, solemnly. I realize now that what the customers were actually thinking was, “When can I get the next plane out of this burg and back to my glass-walled cubicle at the RenCen?” But I was too earnest to figure that out. In fact, I think I even wrote the script for a promotional video called, obviously enough, “I Had No Idea.” It had a great deal of footage of puffy white guys shaking hands at the foot of the two-story, twisted staircase in our new red-brick headquarters, the one our owner’s brother had designed. I’m not twisted enough to make this stuff up, so you have to know it’s true.

It was at a ten-to-one lunch that I found myself seated across the slightly sticky table from someone I'll call "Mr. Travel." He ran our Incentive Travel Group, which, back in those fat 'n happy times, mostly required deciding which of the hundreds of possible “Fam Trips” to go on next. (If you don’t already know what a Fam Trip is, don’t ask; it will just depress you and make you miss the nineties, something you probably never thought possible.) That day when I sat down to lunch, I knew three things about this guy, and I was about to learn one more.

Thing One, he had served proudly in the Marines for a number of years, a fact which came up in every conversation I’d ever had with him, no matter how brief. Thing Two, he had a gigantic copper-glazed sculpture that took up one full wall of his office. It was a topographical depiction of the Hawaiian Islands, each one of which he had visited hundreds of times, on those Fam Trips you weren’t supposed to be thinking about. He sat with his back to the artwork, the better to allow visitors to gaze on its splendor during meetings. It made me think of dentist’s offices, and work-related road trips to sad factory towns, when I had to stay in Holiday Inns with exactly this sort of sculpture in the lobby. Every time I left a meeting in his office, I was thinking about root canals and New Jersey, and I wouldn’t be be able to do my best “I Had No Idea” work for days. Thing Three about him was that he liked to walk around the office with both his hands stuck down the front of his pants. Did I mention that all this was happening decades ago, or is that beginning to become apparent?

So there we were at lunch, drinking ice tea (mid-nineties, not mid-eighties, big difference). Back then, I only had one topic I felt was worthy of discussion – my adorable baby daughter. Had I mentioned yet how cute she was?  Did I show you the latest pictures? Did you want to hear more about her? No one ever did, but that didn’t stop me. I babbled on about the baby, hitting hard on the extra-specialness and super-de-duper wonderfulness of every aspect of her, mentioning a minimum of once every five minutes that she’d been adopted all the way from China. I really did love the kid (still do), but I’m sure I made it sound like she was some sort of imported olive oil or antique chiffarobe, not a human being. My apologies to everyone who had to listen to me between June 1995 and July 1997, when I got hit so hard with the pregnancy stick (daughter number two) that  I pretty much shut up about my damn kids altogether.

So there I was, ignoring the I Had No Idea customer at the other end of the table, babbling about my daughter. Mr. Travel took his hands out of his pants and leaned in, close. “Did you ever think,” he said to me, “that the Chinese government has put microchips in all those girls’ heads, and that they’re just waiting for them to get a little older and stronger and then set them loose to destroy you? And ...” (significant Marine Corps pause) "... all of us?"

Well, that shut me up about the baby. And helped me to realize Thing Four: Despite the sculpture and the Fam Trips, and possibly because of the Marine Corps, (and potentially hinted at by the hands-in-the-pants thing), this man was completely insane.

My husband and I had a good laugh about it at the time, as we put our daughter to bed and then went downstairs to watch videos of her that we'd shot during the day. (Yes, pathetic, and yes, I realize that now.) "A destructive microchip intended to ruin our lives?  Ha ha," we cried, merrily.

Then the years dragged on. The many, many sleepless years. And, every now and then, locked in some epic battle for survival with the strongest life form on earth, my daughter, I would think, suddenly, of that comment about the parent-destroying microchip. Was he crazy? Or the sanest man at the ten-to-one table?

Last week, Emma called home four times in three nights. From Beijing. Long after midnight, our time, each time. Her reasons were perfectly good, at least in the cold daylight of her tomorrow, which was still our trying-to-catch-up-on-lost-sleep yesterday. One time, her debit card wasn’t working. The next time she called, two hours later, guess what, it still wasn't working, and she needed to buy an Asian Miracle Bra, and how was she supposed to do that without a debit card? The last time, she called from a wedding, and wanted to let us she was having a good time, in case we'd been worried. That "good time" on a Beijing Saturday afternoon was midnight in Minneapolis, so it was a little less "good time" and more "nightmare that will not end" from the perspective of our time zone.

After the week we'd had, I suppose it was natural for one of us to let our sad, tired minds return to Mr. Travel.  My husband brought it up first. With his head lying on the kitchen counter and his bleary eyes rolling around, unfocused, in his head, he croaked out his new mantra, “He was right!”

“What did you say?” I asked. And then he told me his theory, the kind that can only come with sleep deptrivation: she’d returned to her homeland for a fresh recharge of her capitalist-pig-destruction batteries. That, he concluded, was the motive behind the Gitmo-level sleep deprivation campaign she'd been waging. “If none of us can get any sleep,” he muttered, “then they’ll be able to flatten our economy even more.”

“They’re doing a pretty good job of it already. Too bad I don’t have an important job, or one with national security implications,” I said. He agreed. “All you do now is nod off during ‘I Had No Idea!' videos." 

“And order a lot of coffee at ten-to-one lunches,” I reminded him.

Mr. Travel, wherever you are right now, I apologize.

Shame Cupcakes

I work for a very nice corporate client who was celebrating a recent business success. To mark the occasion, they created a lovely spread of cupcakes in the employee cafeteria. I was on campus covering other stories, and I wanted to get some photos of the event. And then I got sidetracked into an afternoon’s worth of ruminations on shame, joy and how hard women can be on themselves.

I saw a woman approach the table and take two cupcakes. I asked: “Would you mind posing for me by the ‘Congratulations!’ poster, looking happy and holding your cupcakes?” She looked at me aghast, as if I’d asked her to remove several items of clothing and lay herself out on the catering table. “No!” she said, scurrying away.

Undaunted, I wandered into the cafeteria, noticing a woman who had just returned with a plate of the cupcakes for her friends. As she doled them out, I approached: “Ladies, would you mind holding up your cupcakes and smiling for me?” Again with the quick and horrified refusals. Sensing my dismay, one of the women had a suggestion for me. “If you want a picture, go to that table,” she said, pointing at a five-top of guys about 20 feet away. “I bet they’ll let you.”

And lo, it came to pass. The men happily hoisted their treats and smiled obligingly into the camera. They looked as though they were generally happy fellows, possibly extra happy about getting a free cupcake at work. I got the sense that more than one of them might help himself to seconds, if he felt so inclined. If their lips turned blue from the lurid frosting, I doubted they'd care. Cupcakes were happy food, and they were happy about having them. And that was clearly as much thought as they’d given to the entire matter.

I looked back at the table of women, none of whom was willing to have photographic evidence that she had ever, ever eaten a cupcake. Their treats were not going to taste very good. It might as well have been frosting-covered mud pies those gals were wolfing down. And if they wanted a second cupcake, they’d have to sneak down when no one was in the cafeteria, and eat it all in one bite. At least no would have a picture of them doing it, thank God.

I write a lot about food. I write about trending ethnic cuisines and demographic shifts in snacking and what spicy condiment is about to knock Sriracha off its throne. I write about the importance of probiotics to create a happy climate for gut bacteria, the role of fiber in avoiding blood sugar spikes, and why just about everyone needs more magnesium in their diet. But I never write about joy, and I think it’s time I do.

It’s okay to eat food. It’s okay to let others see you eating food. And it’s even okay to eat a cupcake, as long as you savor and delight in every single morsel. If you end up with blue lips and a three o’clock headache, so what. I am not sure where we women lost track of this, but it’s time to reclaim the simple, goofy attitude of the guys at that table: Oh boy, free cupcakes. Don’t mind if I do.