the cosmic Target lane

On the way to our ever-present Target, there is a double right turn lane. If you go into the far right one, you can turn right on red. If you choose the other, you can't. Which one I choose depends on my level of urgency. It's kind of a cosmic test, really. Today, I chose the left one. The person tailgating me chose the right. Big surprise there.

I just felt no need to gain that extra forty seconds. But why? I was in a hurry. In the course of the day I had to: finish book edits and email them, pack for a four-day trip, cook dinner for my family for said four days, run errands, shop for an outfit to perform a wedding in, and go to an art exhibit. In addition to the “normal” stuff.

But I felt patient. And it started me to wonder, have you ever noticed that your patience level doesn't seem to matter whether or not you are actually pressed for time? If I don't feel stressed, even if I know in my head I have a hundred and one things to do in the day, it just doesn't translate into impatience. On the other hand, if I let myself feel overloaded, I get cranky. And no one likes me in cranky mode. The circumstances can be exactly the same. The not-so-common denominator is attitude.

Which makes me wonder again. If I chose a patient attitude as soon as I felt stressed, might I be a nicer person? This seems kind of elementary. But most things are that we still fail to practice. Good manners aren't rocket science. They're just tough on the execution level. But execution is a choice, always will be. We tend to assume it just happens--that we're at the whim of circumstances, other people, hormones, genetics. But really, we're at the whim of only ourselves. The key word in the paragraph above was let myself feel overloaded.

So, I think may try it. It sure felt better today to be me in the left lane than I imagine that woman felt in the right, needing to tailgate me to get one minute ahead.

Of course, thirty seconds later I sat in the left turn lane widening my eyes and thinking, The arrow just turned green, people. Lets go! So clearly this patience thing has some work to go.

How do you create patience under stress?

barn doors and broccoli

Don't close the barn door after the horse is gone. Better late than never. What did you learn from these proverbs you probably heard as a child?

You learned that people can say totally opposite things and both believe they're right, thus truly confusing the rest of us. This is what I'm re-learning right now as I read two different books on how we should eat.

The first one, Food Matters by Mark Bittman, http://content.markbittman.com/books/food-matters argues that we need to eat less meat and make more careful meat choices in order to survive as a planet. He also explains lots of things we really do not want to put into our bodies, mostly things with more than ten letters in their names that anyone without a chemistry degree cannot pronounce. Unrefined grains and fruits and vegetables are the best diet for the body and the planet, according to Bittman.

The second, Fat to Skinny by Doug Varrieur, http://www.fattoskinny.com/, encourages me to eat more meat and little to no grain or sugar. (Fruits carry quite a bit of sugar, by the way.) Pretty much anything else goes.

So, to whom do I listen? Well, the first author makes sense, and I definitely feel like he's correct about the dangerous path we're on as a collective people with our eating habits. However, listening to the second has caused me to lose ten pounds, a feat I have not managed in the last four years with any other plan. So, who's right?

And my conclusion is that they both are. Which is also true of the proverbs above, right? Some things are never too late, while others cause lifelong regret. The trick is in knowing how to discern which is which before it's too late. If, in fact, it's ever too late. See what I mean?

So, I'm making peace with both. Less meat with more concern for its origin. More homemade and fewer chemicals. More raw veggies. (No, neither author forbids me to cook them. I just don't like cooked vegetables. A serious flaw in any plan to become a vegetarian.) And at least until goal achieved, very few carbs. Both authors can live with that. And so can I.

One is making me more conscious of how what I eat impacts the earth and my body. The other is making me lose weight, finally. I endorse both.

What conflicting advice have you had to make peace with?

more lesson from english class

I have always loved the poem “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost. But I have never agreed with the antagonist's assumption, “Good fences make good neighbors.” My sympathy flowed with the writer, who sensibly stated,

“Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out.”

Now, though, I may understand the other guy.

Shortly after our new neighbors moved in, I murdered all the turf grass and weeds in our front ditch area and planted it full of rescued prairie plants. It was going to be an awesome display of flowering awesomeness, and mower-free as a bonus.

Until the day I got home and found that someone had scraped all the topsoil away, along with the plants, and reseeded it in grass. Huh? It didn't take long to figure out it was our neighbor. It helped that we had an eyewitness.

A lot of work had gone into that planting. And the plants had been free; we could not afford to replace them. What was he thinking by coming onto our property and treating it as his own?

I could have caused trouble. But, I figure you probably don't mess with a guy named Rocky who owns a construction company. First, that means he is big. Second, he has access to backhoes and other large machinery to make sure if he had to bury you in the back forty, he could. And no one would ever know. Oh, did I mention several hunting rifles, too?

Besides, I really do try to live by the motto of "kill them with kindness." Or, as Jesus put it better, "Love your enemies." Most of the time.

I killed the new grass and started over. I am stubborn. And, a couple years later, it looks good. But he has since built a fence so he can keep his perfect green lawn on his side, and I can keep my prairie and gardens on mine. And though I didn't like the idea at first, I realize now, sometimes good fences do make good neighbors.

Sometimes, we actually get along better with someone if we have boundaries that tell one another, “This is my space, and this is yours.” I don't like it. I am naturally a wall-breaker. But sometimes.

Sometime, there are situations and temptations in our lives that are the same. We need to draw a fence around them and tell ourselves, “Keep out.” It's best for both sides. I didn't get that when I taught “The Mending Wall” to high school kids. Now, I think I do.

Do you have a favorite poem? Something one taught you that you still remember?

into the weeds

Yesterday I mowed the lawn. Not earth shaking, I realize. But when you haven't mowed the lawn for a month due to the fact that the mower has to be jumped every single time you want it to start, and given that I am terrified of jumping it myself because I am certain it is going to explode in my face though I have plenty of evidence to the contrary, well, it hasn't gotten done.

So into the midst of this backyard meadow I rolled, and soon I spied a frog jumping out from under the mower. I do not want to run the lawnmower over a frog. Besides the obvious gross factor of frog parts squishing out the side (no jokes about frog legs for dinner please), I am basically a kind person. I cried for over an hour when I accidentally ran over a rabbit four years ago. My husband assumed I was having a psychotic episode born of the fear that I was going to leave my kids and die just like the rabbit. (It was a couple weeks before my transplant surgery.) “No,” I sobbed, “I killed a bunny! Isn't that enough reason to be so upset?” Apparently not. Bambi must not have been a big influence in his childhood. But then, he grew up in a state where antlers are haut décor. What did I expect?

Every time I passed that particular spot, the frog hopped just far enough out of the way and further into the tall grass. For nothing would he hop into the grass that was already mown. To him, that was the dangerous territory. The tall grass where he could hide was the safe zone. Except in reality, it could not have been more the opposite. Real danger lay where the mower had not yet passed.

So, how do I act like a frog? Hopping toward danger that looks safe when hopping the other way, into what looks scary to my mind, is the better path? What comes to mind first is my instinct to flee confrontation any way possible. It's safe, right? No one will get mad at you; no one disagrees. Telling the truth about what I need or want or feel is scary. I have no idea if I'll get run over by a ticked off lawnmower. But through lots of experience avoiding it, I now know avoiding the truth comes at a far higher price.

Sometimes I feel like God is looking on me saying, “No, you idiot! Don't jump into that! Jump toward the scary stuff. That's really where I'll keep you safe.”

Are you a frog? I'd love to know how, and to know I'm not the only one.

details, details

My daughter just took a ten-hour bus trip across Guatemala to reach the agency she'll be serving with for the next three months. During out first phone conversation, I casually (I thought) mentioned, “I suppose I shouldn't ask about the bus trip.”

“No, well, there's a reason I didn't include every detail in the email.”

Which is to say—Mom, no you don't want to know. There are some things about which you would prefer to remain in blissful ignorance. And the funny thing is, that's true.

I know what imagine. I imagine it resembled the road we saw this summer at Hurricane Ridge, on the Olympic Peninsula. Obstruction Pass Road. I mean really, doesn't the name tell you something? Something that's an obstruction just willfully intends to be difficult, right?

To be fair, all the literature about this particular road (and I use the term 'road' to mean 'gravel path someone sarcastically refers to as a road just to see who will attempt to drive down it in an Airstream') warned: Unless you have a real off-road vehicle, do not even attempt this drive. Meaning, if you hail from the suburbs and truly believe in your heart your Hyundai Tucson can go off-roading, you are delusional. Turn back.

Oh, and a death wish. You should have one of those, too. As I have neither, and as that morning the fog was thick enough that you would not even see a guardrail two feet from your car if one did exist, (they didn't) I declined. (By the way, Obstruction Pass Road is not the one to the left in the top picture. It's the one that veers to the right--and disappears somewhere down the mountainside.)

Add to that random kidnappers and bandits (which typically do not exist in the Olympic National Forest, except for some rogue elk) and you get my idea of this road she took in Guatemala. But I choose not to imagine.

Have you had this odd psychosis as a parent? You really choose not to know? Sure, after the fact, when we can swap stories. But at the time it's all coming down, do you want to know the dangers your kids may be in?

Our daughter is so happy making connections with and serving people who are very different from herself. She is discovering much about the world around and inside her. These are good things. These are the things I want to know about. And I can live with the unease that these good things don't always come safely or easily. As long as I don't have to know the details.

I'd love to know how you handle this puzzle.

goodbye, thing 2

I'm a cryer. I cry over movies, books, and TV shows. I cry when I give a speech or preach a sermon. I have been known to cry over a well-dramatized commercial. So when I resolved not to shed a tear at the airport bidding child #2 goodbye for a 3 1/2 month mission trip to Guatemala, I doubted my chances of success. Full leave, you understand, to lose it when she was out of sight dealing with the TSA (on her own), but I refused to make her feel bad about what she was doing by dissolving in front of her.

Just made it. And now, at what child #3's facebook status puts at 99 days, 12 hours, and 43,521seconds until her return, I have found it is not as I expected it to be. I expected sadness. Tears. Quiet. A feeling that something was not quite right. More tears. What I did not expect was the physical pain. The three-day upset stomach. The lethargy that has nothing to do with the intense knee pain from two days in a cramped car. The profound sadness deeper than tears, which come so randomly anyway at all times. And now I understand just what that phrase "deafening silence" really means.

No one is singing Disney songs at the top of her (very powerful) lungs. No one is finishing my sentences. No one is quoting Austen, Tolkien, and Monty Python at me all in the same conversation. So, perhaps in the interest of all parents who have said goodbye to an offspring lately, I should compile a list of the good things.

--No one is hogging the bathroom for 45 minutes every day.

--No one is leaving her dirty socks, computer cords, dishes, and schoolbooks all over five rooms and then not knowing where they are. (The books, that is. She has never cared where the dirty socks and dishes are.)

--No one is using the car and computer that belong to her. So, extra for us.

--No one is telling me, "Oh, by the way, you're driving ten of my friends to the movie in a half hour. And could you stop and get some food for us, too?"

But let's face it. Not one thing is better here because she is gone into the world in her own.

But the world is better. And isn't that the tradeoff we hope to make as parents?

It hurts like real grief always hurts. But it means, while everything feels all wrong, it is indeed all right.

stranger than fiction

Imagine you did something illegal when you were seven years old. In point of fact, you didn't even really understand that you did it. But, you did. Now imagine that, ten years later, someone told you you were going to lose everything you had ever known--your home, family, school and work--because of it. Are you imagining? How do you feel about that upheaval of life as you know it?

Now imagine that this isn't imagination for thousands of people. And you will know why I have written the novel for young adults that I have and why I believe so much in getting it out there.

My characters are fictional. So, if you like, read the story of someone for whom this story is real.

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/21/139823639/new-policy-gives-hope-to-some-facing-deportation

Not everyone is going to like what the book has to say, though I try to be balanced. But I think that Melissa would.

so here's my firepit candidate

I said I'd post my answers, and momma always taught me to do what I said I'd do. (The fact that I didn't always listen could have affected a couple of job performances in the past. Mommas really do know these things.) So here they are:

• What was your favorite assigned book from high school?

A tie between Merchant of Venice and Great Gastby. Sure, the first is not really a "book." But I can still recite quite a bit of Portia's mercy speech for you, if you like.

• What was your least favorite/most detested/one you burned in the fire pit just as soon as you finished the final exam on that puppy?

Can you believe I don't really remember? I did truly loathe anything Steinbeck. Oh, I know, I know. A Farewell to Arms. How repetitive and depressing can one man get?

• And what book did you discover later in life that you learned to love or wished you had discovered earlier?

So many. It was not until freshman year of college that I discovered The Chronicles of Narnia (via my Jewish roommate--how funny is that?). I quickly made up for lost time.

A few years later, another friend introduced me to Anne of Green Gables. How did a girl who grew up devouring Little House books miss that? I adore Anne, and I think I gave birth to her as well.

A Wrinkle in Time. One of the best children's books ever. Ever. And adult as well.

Finally, sometime in high school my brother gave me a book and told me, "This is the best book ever written. You have to read it." I dutifully read a few chapters and said to myself, "This is the most boring book ever written. I could not finish it if you threatened to pull out all my teeth." It was The Silmarillion, by J.R.R.Tolkien.

Years later, when the first Lord of the Rings movie was scheduled to appear, my husband, also a huge Tolkien fan, decided to read the books aloud to our girls. My husband. My brother. Must be a guy thing, right? After seeing the movie, I went home and read all three books straight through. They are now three of my top five favorite books of all time. That's a pretty good standing for an author I considered boring as heck years ago.

So now you know my reading likes and dislikes. You also know, never judge a book by how you felt about it, or its author, a long time ago. Give everyone a second chance. Except James Joyce. I will never give him a second chance. One bout of torture in college was enough.

Anyone else brave enough to share?

better than colin

My husband is amazing. (Yes, he even beats out Colin Firth.) Why? Some time ago, I was talking with a person at our church about how the music was not really to my husband's taste, but he loved it there anyway. The person looked at him, then responded, "Yeah, he looks more like an NPR kind of guy to me." I laughed more than out loud. You could pretty much put that phrase on my husband's tombstone. He is an NPR kind of guy.

But since our first day at the new church, he has never looked back in his enthusiasm, because he knew great things would happen there, and he wanted to be a part of that. I have always been rather amazed by that, but I have begun to realize how grateful I should be as well. I have a man willing to put aside his preferences, styles, and comfort zone for the greater good of his family and, ultimately, a lot of people who have been helped. That's pretty cool, especially given that our generation is the most me-centered, my rights, my needs one I think has ever existed.

Yes, including the present young one. We (rightfully) decry the riots in London, but let's face it, we are the generation that started the self-love fest. We're kind of reaping what we sowed. On the whole, this upcoming generation is more generous of their time and money than we were. They have their issues, but they do care. In that way, they may resemble our fathers who fought in the Greatest Generation than us. Thank heaven.

So today, I'm thankful for a sacrificial man. What about you?

We've been talking about young adult literature. I'm curious about your experience. I love the stories some of you have shared about a book that made a lasting impression on you early in life. (And early in life is getting later and later the older we get, right?) Let's be real here, some of us are having a hard time remembering what we read in high school. So those of you still there or around there, help us out, OK?

So, please let us know:

• What was your favorite assigned book from high school?

• What was your least favorite/most detested/one you burned in the fire pit just as soon as you finished the final exam on that puppy?

• And what book did you discover later in life that you learned to love or wished you had discovered earlier?

The more input we get the more fun I'm going to have, at least, reading through to see what has affected other people.

I'll share mine later.

kick me, please

I am working on a marketing plan for a novel. Not so long ago, I would not have shared that information in public. One, I don't talk about my work much. Two, I don't like to sound remotely presumptuous. Three, I know that if I say it people are going to ask me about it. And then I'm stuck actually doing it. And I really hate accountability.

Yet I have learned not only to accept it but need it. I've never been good with criticism or correction. I like to play Lone Ranger a lot. I never outgrew the two-year-old mantra, "I can do it myself." But one thing getting older does for you is teach you a couple things, one of which is, no, I can't. The other is, if I want to do it myself and actually get it done, it helps a lot to have someone around to kick me in the butt.

Now, I prefer to choose those people myself. The position is still not open for anyone to apply. Folks who like to randomly correct others should generally just, not.

My kids hold me accountable. "Mom, you really shouldn't have said that." And that's OK. They're usually right. Since they possess quite a bit of their mother in them, however, plus the commonality of teenagerdom, this is not a reciprocal arrangement. I am not allowed to make them aware of their own mistakes. They do not, obviously, make any.

My husband, honestly, not so much. I prefer to keep that relationship more lover/friend than teacher/parent. The latter does not work for me. And he gets reminded of that every so often.

Real friends--the kind who are not perfect themselves and therefore will never say to me, "Well, how many times have you done that now?" qualify. My pastor can keep me accountable. My colleagues. And that's pretty much the short list.

Why now? Because it's way more important to me now that the things I want to do, the dreams I have not realized, the growth I'd like to flourish, really happen than that I preserve my pride. So, I'm working on a proposal. And you can hold me to it.

As to the twenty pounds I'm working on . . . well, you might want to tread lightly there. The list is even shorter.

What helps you get that kick you need every so often?

oh no, not the turtle again

I promised, so I'm coming back to this literature thing. Some of you are scared off right there. The word "literature" has terrified you since since Mrs. Finley in 10th grade stared at you through her little nose-perched glasses and asked, "What is the symbolism of the turtle in Grapes of Wrath? And you thought, "I have no clue, but I do know he took an awful dang long time to cross that stupid road, and I took that as a hint at how boring the other 345 pages would be, so I never got past page 36, and please stop staring at me!"

But I am not Mrs. Finley. And the question on the table was, what makes a book a classic worth asking young people to read despite (or because of) the sad elements in it, and what makes a book simply depressing without a lot of redeeming value in assigning it to kids who have enough garbage in their lives to deal with?

The above example is actually a pretty good one, for me. I have to admit right off, this English teacher despised Steinbeck in high school. Too depressing and too vulgar. I'm still not a huge fan, but I did a 180 and taught Of Mice and Men later because could go back and see the incredible value in the lessons of that book and the mastery in its writing. So, sad and harsh isn't always bad.

Then there were the things we had to read because teachers were trying too hard to be "relevant." I know I'll step on toes here, because people love these books, but I hated, hated, hated reading things like The Outsiders. To quote a review, "This book forever changed the way that Young Adult fiction was written (and) also changed the way that teenagers read, enabling a generation to demand stories that reflected their actuality."

And my feeling at 14 was that what it did was talk down to teenagers and tell us that teachers knew all we cared about was our own issues and feelings, and therefore we would now be fed a steady diet of books written about our "reality," which they were only guessing at as far as I could tell and embellishing quite a lot at that. And I sat there thinking, "I am not a stupid selfish high school kid who can't see past these four years and four walls, and will you please treat me like someone who can do better?" And that's the way I feel when I look at my daughter's summer reading list that is full of depressing novels written about "teen reality." Where are the books written about life's reality and rising above it?

What would your criteria be? How would you decide between what makes something a classic and what is simply depressing and unnecessary? I think I'd at least start with the question--Does the book offer a redemptive solution at the end, so that the sadness isn't all there is?

Shakespeare, for all his tragedy, at least tells us how to avoid the same fate if we take notice. Though, were I to tell the tale of Romeo and Juliet, I'd probably offer the moral that girls who get married after knowing a guy for ten minutes might deserve what they get. Not to mention considering stalkers at their windows perfectly acceptable.

What else? Please chime in.

do you still hate your high school english teacher?

OK, now you've done it, my friends. Hit two of my hot buttons at the same time. I'm talking about a facebook conversation about literature in high school that I just had to jump into. Even though I know the possibility of confining myself to a facebook word count when discussing teenagers, literature, and teen depression is about as likely as me cliff diving in Mexico. And it's way bigger than one blog post, so I imagine there may be several.

So, I'm the mother of three teenage girls, a former high school English teacher, and a writer, currently working on my first young adult novel. I care passionately about what kids read. And too often, I'm really discouraged by it.

You might think I mean the books they choose to read for themselves, but I don't. I mean the ones their teachers/administrators require them to read. The list reads like a Who's Who and What's What of everything that could possibly go bad with the world and, specifically, their lives. By the end of freshman year, most kids should, according to their literature books, have suffered the death, imprisonment, abuse, or addiction of at least one parent; war-related trauma; rape; a car accident that killed their best friend and/or sister; and probably an end-of-the-world cannibal scenario thrown in as well. The fact that most kids don't seems to have escaped the purview of literature teachers everywhere.

My youngest daughter's summer freshman reading list last year was a good case in point. I do not recall one book on the list that wasn't flat out depressing. And having talked with teens and lived through a lot of teenage depression, this does more than annoy me. It alarms me. At an age when kids are so prone to doomsday thinking anyway (Something bad happened to me today. Therefore, my life sucks. I guess everyone's life sucks. Is there anything worth getting up for tomorrow?), why do we feel the need to fan the flame? Shouldn't we consider maybe putting books in their paths that send the message, "Life is beautiful, even if you have to hang on a while to get there?" For whatever reason, we think feeding them "reality" means feeding endless messages about how ugly the world is, instead.

I'm not unrealistic. My own mother died while I was in high school. So did my sister. A very dear friend killed himself. I get that bad things happen to kids. The question is, is that all we want them to know? Do we really want to spend four years affirming their fears? "Yep, you're right. Life sucks. Now graduate and get out there!"?

What do you think? It would be great to generate some opinions and even some reading alternatives. Back to this later!

acting my age

I love being 48. Not ashamed to own my age. Prepared to flaunt it. Better than the alternative. So what inspires this mutual love affair with my age? Purple hair.

Do you really want an explanation, or, as one of my favorite Harry Potter lines goes, "After all this time, (have you) just learned to go with it?" So, last night was the first dress rehearsal of The Wiz, our community theater production. Last night, I came home with purple hair and purple glittery fingernails. And today, before my haircut appointment, I had to go shopping and commit several other public offenses.

Five years ago, I would never have ventured out of my house with purple hair. I would have been mortified at the thought. What would people think? Say? What children might I frighten? Today, I was completely amused. Now, I imagine what people might say, and it's fun to let my imagination go. It's not got far to go. I know what I might have said about a 48-year-old woman with purple hair wearing decidedly not mom-jeans not long ago.

Now, it is so darn much fun not to care. And that's why I love being 48.

What do you love about your age?

oh so pleasant

OK, so it doesn't look like anyone else's house. But then, the inhabitants aren't quite like anyone else.

Really, my husband has made amazing progress. Used to be, when we had to spray paint a garage sale find, or a 4H project, or a costume piece in the driveway, he'd get all distressed because we didn't cover the asphalt. I always said it added character to the house to have all those paint outlines. Plus, people got to guess what we'd painted by the shape of the outline. And since the driveway has more cracks in it than all of the Golden Girls put together, it's not exactly a cosmetic blemish.

So, surprised we were when middle child got the brainstorm to paint the outside of the house and he agreed to let her do it. Now, you understand, I do not mean paint as in paint the nice lemon yellow with blue trim I have in mind one day when we can afford it. I mean as in, abstract art all over the side of the house. Yes, it's tempera, so it will eventually was off, but still. Quite a serious character departure for my husband.

You probably won't be surprised that it was not so for me. Still, I was surprised to discover how much I really love the finished product. (Though I doubt it will ever be 'finished.') Life is just too short to worry about what the neighbors will think about the front of the house. I'd rather think about what we're learning about creativity and flexibility and thinking outside the box when faced with a situation that we'd like to change (in this case, the awful color of the house).

To quote my favorite actor of all time:

"Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."

My paraphrase would be:

"In this world, you can be oh so controlling or oh so flexible. Well, for years I was controlling. I recommend flexible. You may quote me."

Not only that, but I have a really cool house now!

bronco driving friends

In light of recent events at our high school, I've been thinking a lot lately about friends. Facebook friends, lunch friends, cry on your shoulder friends, or, as one comedienne recently put it, Bronco driving friends. And the book I'm reading right now (Gen Buy: How Tweens, Teens, and Twenty-Somethings are Revolutionizing Retail) is verifying what I've suspected. We can be "connected" to hundreds of people and feel completely alone.

According to the authors, "Only half of Americans today say that they have a friend, besides their spouse, to confide in and rely on for support. That's a big drop from 1985, when nearly three-quarters of Americans felt they had such a friend. One-quarter of Americans say they don't have anybody to confide in. . . . hundreds of Facebook friends and dozens of daily email exchanges don't cut it when it comes to feeling the safety and support of close friends and confidents."

The "recent event" is the tragic suicide of a young man who, reportedly, had over 1,000 Facebook friends. Some of them had to be good friends. But how many were friends "to confide in and rely on for support"? We can't know. What we do know, increasingly, is that texting and IMing aren't providing teens with the relationships they need. But I know, from watching the specimens in my own house, that that is pretty much all the species does to communicate.

What's the answer? Any suggestions? I I've got a lot of teenagers on my Facebook list. I'd love to hear your thoughts.