Boycott

As a child I don’t remember  questioning the authority of my teachers,  I loved school and remember no run-ins there.

My parents were easy-going and so neither do I remember much contention at home,  although as a teenager I had the usual adolescent battles with my mother,  and remember storming out of the house during heated arguments.   However what the fights were about I can barely recall,  although I remember once desperately wanting a Loden coat that all my friends seemed to have.  But my parents,  usually indulgent,  adamantly refused to buy it for me as it was imported from Germany and in those post-war years they insisted on boycotting all German goods.

And later there were some issues involving their disapproval of a few guys I dated,  and of other youthful decisions I had made.  But otherwise I don’t remember seriously questioning parental authority.

Then while working as a high school librarian there were  few issues that brought me in conflict with the school administration,  although when my teachers’ union voted to strike I marched on the picket line.   And I joined the American Library Association and took outspoken stands on censorship and book banning.   And in my community I sat on a local civic board that fought the city on budgetary and environmental issues.

But in my professional and social circles I was an outlier who was generally accepting of the status quo and unapologetically apolitical – a strange conundrum since I’d grown up in a passionately political family.

And for years I remained stubbornly apolitical until I could bury my head in the sand no longer.  (See Good Girl and Getting Woke)

And with that awakening I realized how admirable was my parents’ moral stance in boycotting German goods,  a lesson more valuable than a Loden coat.

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

Anti-Authoritarianism

My German-born father was rather strict and accustomed to getting his own way.   When I turned 14 and was about to graduate from junior high he wanted to send me to boarding school in Switzerland.  I refused, not wanting to leave my friends and family.

“It’s like the army,”  he retorted,  “and I’m the general and you’re the private.”

“Then I’m going AWOL.”   I said.

That September I enrolled at Forest Hills High,  my local neighborhood school.

The writer with unnamed Retro admin

– Danny L,  guest writer 

This is damned near always a counterproductive and malicious strategy
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Remember the old movie, “The Crying Game”, where one of the lead characters passes as a different gender until the big reveal toward the end of the movie? The audience was admonished to not give away the secret so it wasn’t ruined for those who hadn’t seen the film yet. That came to mind when I first saw this prompt. Then I dug a bit deeper and understood it was really about whom we took as role models to emulate in our own lives.

With Dad

I don’t have one person, though certainly my father was formative – his sunny personality, his love of family, his ability to make and keep life-long friendships, even while making new friends everywhere he went, his genuine interest in community service work and the betterment of those around him. Those were all traits I deeply admired and chose to emulate.

With Mom

Conversely, I knew I wanted to avoid being like my mother in the way she parented. She was stingy with praise; a nervous cook, so wouldn’t let me into her kitchen. She was anxious around babies, her own and others, so even when visiting after my children were born, wouldn’t help at all, nor could she give any parenting advice. She was afraid to handle babies.

Yet she did know and love the arts, which are central to my life and she taught me about those. She also taught me good manners, a lost art these days, but I still feel it is important and will get one gracefully through many difficult situations. So in some ways, I did follow her lead.

With my glamorous cousin in the Hotel Sacher, Vienna, 2008

My cousin Sissi taught me about self-resilience, generosity of spirit, work ethic, but also, love of family and taking care of oneself.

With Mel, while visiting camp in the ’70s

Dude sings my praises – delivering my 3rd Operetta Chorus Award, 1969

From my favorite camp teachers, Dude Stephenson and Mel Larimer, I learned discipline and hard work, but to always make it fun. We WANTED to work hard, so we would produce a great product. They were both marvelous teachers as well as friends (as we campers grew into adulthood). And the friends I made at camp sustain me even today. I love and honor the teachers’ memories, converse with my wise and wonderful camp friends around the country on a constant (in some cases, daily) basis. Their accumulated wisdom, talent and goodness guide me. As do my two best high school friends and a few Brandeis friends – friendships of a lifetime. Nothing can be better.

My two best friends from high school and camp friend, who sang at my wedding. 6/16/74

I have a long history of poor sleep. When I was still working, a colleague and I used to joke that we should have called one another at 4:00 a.m. because we were both up at ridiculous o’clock every day.
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The Extension

The big telephone issue these days of course is whether or not to give up our landlines.   But the big deal when I was young was whether a girl could convince her folks to have an extension to the family telephone installed in her bedroom!

If they would,  l remember promising my parents,  I’d be completely happy and would never ask for anything again!

And – to the envy of friends who were then still extension-less  – I got it,  a beautiful pink princess telephone with an extra long cord so I could carry it all around my room as I chatted away.

I had a big crush on a boy named Warren at the time,  and one afternoon he called me and of course I ran upstairs to take the call in the privacy of my attic bedroom.  We had been talking for quite awhile when I heard my mother calling me from downstairs.   I told Warren to hold on and I went out to the top of the staircase to hear what she was saying.

She was calling me to dinner,  and so I hurried down to eat.

We were at the table a bit later when the doorbell rang and my father got up to answer it.  It was Warren who’d come over to say I’d left the phone off the hook and no one at his house could make a call!

– Dana Susan Lehrman 

Smart people can do or be many things.
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