Vitaregimen

How I learned to stop worrying and love the Pin...

Got my water wings, and my life jacket, and I’m diving deeper into the social media pool: I am now on Pinterest. 

Actually, I signed up a few weeks ago, but just screwed up enough courage to post some initial ‘pins’ or pictures. My initial fear whenever I sign on to a new social network is worrying about how it will sink its tentacles into my soul, co-opting my privacy and my identity.  I also thought my preference for text might not mesh well with the way the site is structured – namely, with Pinterest you express yourself with images more than words...  

Basically, it’s visible evidence of your trail on the internet, only you get to control who sees what. The pictures, links and videos you 'pin' to the boards reveal your sense of aesthetic -  and help you to build your skills as a curator of the web, much like creating your own personal magazine.  What's also interesting is how differently people can view the same image. I've posted a photo I took of a corroded window grate on a board called 'Textures and Shapes', but others have re-pinned it on their own 'Colours' 'Design' and 'Home' pages.

Right now, it seems the audience is female-heavy, but that may be due to the fact that home, hearth, fashion and food tend to do well in these types of visual mediums. That doesn't mean that increasing numbers of men won't use the photo-sharing service in the future, as the platform is literally what you make of it.  (Note: I did not use the term 'scrapbooking', so as not to scare off the menfolk.)

Pinterest seems intuitive and easy to use.  The only oddity I found is that if you sign up ‘cold’ - i.e., you have no one to invite you in -  you have to submit a request, and wait 2-3 days for them to get back to you.  Just enough of a waiting period to create a (false) sense of exclusivity, although with 11 million unique visitors last month, it probably won't remain exclusive for much longer.

I’m not sure if it’ll curb my habit of ripping pages out of magazines and storing them in plastic bins in my garage, never to be seen again. But at the least, maybe the lives of a few trees will be spared.     

Take a look…you might like it:

http://pinterest.com/vitaregimen/

Get Over It and Get On With It

It's the time of year where I have to use far too many brain cells dithering around stores to try to find desirable, yet appropriate presents. The other day I finally bit the bullet and ventured into the madness that is Holiday Gift Shopping.

I guess it wasn’t that bad.  I only encountered a couple of  Grinches at Wal-Mart – just had one parking spot stolen, and one shopping cart filched.  (had a brief interior monologue over the latter – “HOW could ANYONE steal a SHOPPING CART with STUFF in it?!!!” – spinning around angrily trying to find the culprit so I could look in them in the eyes and- - -before figuratively slapping myself in the face with a ‘Get over it and get on with it,’ and got another basket. 

These days, the stores are none too helpful—and I’m not talking about the salespeople. Merchandisers seem to be offering a confusing and bizarre array of novelties.

This is one of the first toys I found right off the bat—clearly someone’s idea of a  cosmic joke. It’s as if the clown is maniacally chuckling at the impossibility of an adult trying to get inside the mind of an 8- and 11-year-old to figure out what they want. Or maybe he’s just laughing at me as I look for my stolen shopping cart:

 

I found him to be cruel.

I was actually intrigued by this one –  a shirt that’s got an electronic ‘guitar’ embedded in the fabric. I was just about to bite, when I my eye happened to catch the ‘special washing instructions’ and something about a glowing red LED light indicating when the thing was fully charged:

 

After that,  all I could hear in my head were the words  “Tonight on Local 2 News” “on fire” and “recall”.

Next.

Finally, from well-known childrens recording artist T-Pain - coinciding with his recently released nursery rhyme “5 O’Clock In the Morning” and just in time for Christmas:  it’s the The “I Am T-Pain” electric mic – complete with  “T-Pain Effect!":

 

Uhhhhhhhhhhh.....no.

It finally occurred to me that I should follow the more creative, building-block style of gift-giving my Jewish brethren have relied on for years—to quote comedian Lewis Black:  “First night, you get socks; second night, an eraser, a notebook—it's a back to school holiday.”  My version: an mp3 player from me, and speakers and a case to carry them in from Santa.

To quote the Target commercial:  Done.

Alec Baldwin. American Airlines. Flight Attendants.

The Alec Baldwin/American Airlines ruckus is all over the news, and I'm hearing wildly varying viewpoints on the subject of electronic inflight devices, in addition to some bashing of flight attendants and airlines.

My big-picture perspective as a former airline employee who's had to sit in endless equipment certification meetings: 

The cabin has to be in a very specific state once the doors are closed in order for the aircraft to be able to take off.  Flight attendants play an integral part in making sure this state is initiated and maintained, and are required to communicate safety regulations to passengers as clearly and succinctly as possible – one of which is to turn off all electronic devices after doors close.  They have the difficult job of getting 150 or more people to behave consistently and safely in a pressurized tube shooting 30,000 feet into the air at 500 miles per hour.

Cut them some slack.

And for those who say that it’s not scientifically proven that such devices disrupt flight operations – do you really want something that important to be determined by millions of individual passengers  on an ad-hoc, spur-of-the-moment basis? Or should we leave it up to the avionics and mechanical engineers whose job it is to conduct years of ground and inflight testing, in order to gain the multiple FAA certifications needed to allow any electronic device inflight? I prefer the latter.

On My bookshelf: TV Sets

Do people buy coffee table books anymore? I have a varied collection, but one of my all-time favorites is a book called  TV SETS by artist  Mark Bennett.

Ever wonder where Alice's room was in relation to Mr. Brady's office? The layout of Fonzie's garage apartment in the Cunningham's back yard? The location of Grandpa Munster's sleeping perch in the basement? Bennett uses his imagination and his memories to create what he calls 'fantasy blueprints'--highly detailed architectural drawings of famous sitcom homes from the 50s, 60s and 70s - in essence allowing you to become a guest (or a peeping Tom) on some beloved tv families.

Features such chapter headings as "The New York Apartment,"  "Suburban Bliss" and "Single Parent Families." Bennett even triangulates the Ricardo's living arrangements, going so far as to include layouts of the Lucy and Ricky's NYC apartment, Connecticut house, and Beverly Palms Hotel Suite--a man after my own television-obsessed heart.

I was stunned in looking for links for this post to see  booksellers offering hard copy originals for anywhere from $60 to $230 bucks, with paperbacks ranging from $30 to $60.  I can't belive this book isn't offered on Kindle yet...

(Someassemblyrequired)

By now we’ve all seen the videos – pepper spraying over X-Box 360s, shoving crowds, The Great $2 Waffle Iron Riot of 2011…

Since when did Christmas become Nightmare on Elm Street?

I guess it’s time for me to snap out of my turkey-induced coma and face the reality that I’m going to have to start shopping for Christmas presents for my kids. 

You’d think as they get older, all this would get easier, but the closer your little ones get to tweendom, the harder it is to gauge what they really want. Not to mention the fact that what they want is inevitably more grown-up (read: expensive).

Too old for more simplistic little kid toys, too young to buy them a car--chances are, no matter what you get them, they’re probably not going to like it anyway.

Sounds cruel and unappreciative, you say?   For real?  You’re not remembering the itchy wool tam o’ shanter your mother-in-law bought you in Scotland that you've worn like maybe, oh, NEVER, or the necklace adorned with pendants shaped like bottle caps and beer can tabs that your aunt gave you, or the sweater your mom sent you in college (possibly designed by someone inspired by that musical number in Bye Bye Birdie) embroidered with patterns of phone receivers?

 

Each holiday season, I’ve had to deal with inappropriate toys, parking nightmares, and dealing with the myth of Santa Clause in an effort to find that perfect gift.

This year it’s going to be different.  While I’ve always tried to teach my kids to be appreciative of what they get, I’ve decided that I’m tired of wasting money on presents that lose their flavor five minutes after they’re taken out of the box. This year, I’m going to be more STRATEGERY in how I go about my shopping. To that end, I’m making the following pledge to myself:

1. I will not to get suckered in by all the toy ads on TV—the ones that have been steadily increasing since early November, and which tend to crop up during at odd and uncomfortable times on the TV schedule—like that Pillow Pets commercial during American Horror Story.
2. I will plug my ears when a commercial outlines a list of about 20 impossible-sounding functions the toy can perform. Repeat after me: “If it sounds too good to be true (see Sea Monkeys) then it probably is.”
3. I will not purchase any gift that requires me to set up a hidden Santa’s Workshop in some dark, musty crawl space in the house, enduring the mental torture of sleep deprivation just to put them together.

This newer, more stress-free approach to gift-giving is my attempt to avoid the anxiety-ridden “Night Before Christmas”-es I inevitably put myself through. Like what happened last year:

Time	Incident:
1:00AM	After hours of surreptitious giftwrapping, I lay out the HermoineHarryPotterDeathlyHallows outfit I bought Aubrie, only to discover the cashier forgot to remove the security tag from an integral part of the ensemble: the coat
1:01AM	Commence stomping around (silently), cursing my misfortune
1:16AM	Go on YouTube, entering “how to remove security tags” into the search box (not surprisingly, you can find quite a number of ‘experts’ who have had lots of practice)
1:25AM	Find a solution, courtesy of some angelic-looking little Oliver Twist waif on the internet. Using a couple of pliers pointed in opposite directions, I make several attempts to loosen the device's grip
1:27AM	Give up after only a few minutes, after suddenly envisioning what mom’s face will look like as she walks into her living room on Christmas morning to find purple security ink  spattered all over her light green carpet and designer Christmas tree
4:00AM	My brother and I complete a two-hour construction of an air hockey table with a kabillion tiny screws (still at mom’s house BTW, because it won’t fit through the front door, and will have to be deconstructed)
7:30AM	Am awakened by the kiddos after a 3 ½ hour ‘nap’; try to feign alertness and enthusiasm

The above doesn’t even include the expensive and waaaay-over-his-head remote control helicopter I bought Max. While I didn’t have to put it together, I did have to spend a good portion of Christmas morning trying to prevent him from flying it into mom’s glass ornaments or the lit fireplace. (File under: What. Was. I. Thinking.)

Was all that effort really worth it? Did the kids really care in the long run?  I’m not so sure, given that an imaginary man in a red velvet suit is getting fifty percent of the credit. So I’m dialing it back this year, and try not to be so Martha Stewart in my level of effort. I still have no idea what I'm going to get the kids. But I know one thing: I've got three weekends to do it, and the closer I get to D-day, the more desperate and hysterical my fellow shoppers and I will become. It'll be bloodier than the birth scene in Breaking Dawn.

Wonder if they make purse-sized tazers?

QUESTION OF THE DAY:

We're all mature, considerate adults here, and appreciate the sentiment behind gift-giving, but tell the truth: what are some of the worst or most inexplicable presents you’ve ever received? Christmas, Hanukah, Birthdays…come on, I won’t tell anyone…promise.

The Times that Try Mother's Souls

I used to be one of the people who made fun of Britney Spears, until I saw this picture of her.

It was pre-breakdown, when the paparazzi snapped a series of photos of her as she nearly dropped her son on the sidewalk—the only thing between her son and the pavement being a bodyguard, who happened to catch her fall. Note the picture to the right—it’s of her in a restaurant immediately after the incident took place, trying to calm herself down. Take a look at the expression on her face. Recognize it? If you’re a mother, and you‘ve ever had one of those days, you will. It’s the pained, exhausted, damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t-look every mother gets from time to time.

After seeing that photo, and noticing how distraught she looked, the easy jokes made at her expense—especially the ones deriding her parenting skills—just didn’t seem so funny anymore.

While we may not have the paparazzi following us around witnessing our every Rick Perry/Britney Spears ‘Oops!’ moments, anyone who’s a mother has been there. I forgot to pack my child’s lunch the other week. Using that modern miracle of technology, the cellular phone, she texted me to let me know I’d forgotten. No problem, I thought— thinking how wonderful it was to live in an era where we as parents can communicate instantly with our kids!—I’ll just text her back to let her know she has money on her school card and can go through the lunch line.

Only problem with this brilliant plan? She didn’t get the message until 2 hours after I’d originally sent it. Apparently the system was suffering some kind of intestinal blockage, and the text didn’t go through until much later that afternoon.

The end result? She ended up going through the day lunch-less—so much for technology.

She texted me later that day, attaching what looked like an animation of an angry, red-faced Care Bear to the end of the message, saying she was ‘Super-angry’ at me and about how she hadn’t eaten “ALL DAY!”—which, because of the nature of the issue—lack of food—caused me to go into instant motherly-shame-spiral mode.

If you’re a mom, or even a parent, you know the never-ending serving of guilt you feel when you forget something basic, like food. Or the heart-attack you experience when you’re at work, knee-deep in a project, only to be knocked out of your reverie by a phone call from your kid’s school sixty seconds before the pickup deadline, calmly asking you which responsible adult is supposed to be retrieving your child that day (“AAAUUUGGGHHH!!! I’LL BE RIGHT OVER!”).

It goes way beyond feeling you’ve merely disappointed someone—when you try to do everything humanly possible to make sure your child’s day goes without a hitch, but miss one TINY little thing. It’s really easy for an irrational feeling of hopelessness to set in.

It’s not the first time I’ve felt an enormous sense of guilt about something outside of my control. Once, when she was 3 years old, I went outside—for juuuuuust a second—to talk to a neighbor on my front porch. When I opened the screen door to get back in, the heavier wooden door sucked shut, accidentally locking her inside. My mind started racing—did I leave the stove on? (thankfully, I did not) Is she afraid? (she was).

The neighbor was kind enough to try to help me jimmy the lock on the door to get back in. His wife even got a Barbie Doll (a prize she received in an office party – “Temp-Agency Barbie,” I believe it was called) to give to Aubrie to comfort her. We tried to put her through the mail slot, but of course had difficulty getting it past her boobs (The doll's, not the wife's).

Eventually we broke through the back door and I was able to retrieve Aubrie without any major trauma or injury. But what only took about 20 minutes seemed like it lasted forever…

Of course, with the short attention spans and forgiving nature children seem to possess—mostly because they want you to buy them an iPhone 4, or take them to see that Breaking Dawn movie—all is usually forgiven shortly thereafter.  However, I'm still keeping a tip jar to pay for future therapy sessions by my front door.

Without inciting a visit from CPS of course, what are your own favorite stories of motherly ‘neglect’ or forgetfulness—something you perpetrated in spite of yourselves?

Cooking While App-ing

I inspect my kids’ cheese-and-chocolate-covered hands before I allow them to lay a finger on my keyboard. I can also tell when they’ve been using my iPod touch, when instead of gliding, my finger mysteriously snags on some invisible snail trail (most likely grape jelly). 

So I was horrified this morning when I found a drop of water had somehow found its way onto the casing of my laptop as I was making my morning tea (the dreaded ‘liquid intrusion’ in airline engineering-speak).

I can’t imagine having an expensive electronic device in the kitchen. So I have my doubts about this NYT piece extolling the virtues of digital cookbooks—namely its prediction of the possible demise of the print versions. Although I have to give it to the developers—the concept of organizing the way a recipe is presented based on a cook’s level of skill could be very useful—there’s something to be said about the gravy stains, the writing in the margins, the dog ears, and the memories contained in books. Even the writer says so (up to a point):

 

“Cookbooks have long offered their own kind of enriched content, in the form of scribbles left in the margins by cooks who found they liked a little extra cinnamon, or a higher oven temperature. As it turns out, there’s an app for that, too.”

Julia Moskin, The New York Times

 

There’s an app for that? Wow!

Can you imagine handing down your flour-stained tablet to your grandkids? I think not. 

The following is a re-broadcast of a previous post I wrote about that great American cookbook, The Joy of Cooking – which ironically experienced a similar midlife crisis due to the major revisions featured in the 75^th anniversary edition:

 

(Originally Published: November 3, 2006)

I'm down with JOC

The publishers of the Joy of Cooking, that lovable, hoary old standard, have come up with a new version in honor of the 75th anniversary of the original book. 

The mantra among housewives in the old days? ‘Better living through chemistry and pre-prepared goods.’ Why put yourself out shelling peas when you could buy them flash-frozen and ready to heat?   The old Joy of Cooking seemed to take this to heart, seeing no irony in including ingredients like canned cream of chicken soup alongside recipes for roasted small game birds.  If household cooks wanted more complex fare, they could certainly flip through the pages for instructions on how to make pâté en croute, but more likely they’d head out to a restaurant instead.

Times have changed-- increasing popularity of niche programming like The Food Network and Yahoo Food is evidence that people's tastes are becoming more diverse. Being able to witness food trends from around the world in living color, they're gathering the courage to become gourmets in their own kitchens — paying premium prices for exotic ingredients at stores like Whole Foods.  (Or at least, getting their kicks watching other people cook on tv and online.)

When it comes to The Joy of Cooking, its fanboys appear to suffer a full-blown identity crisis every time a new version is published. The question is, how do you update a homely almost century-old handbook of culinary arts in an age when the cult of personality of a chef—the Martha Stewarts and Rachael Rays of this world—often overshadows the actual recipes in the book?  Should it be home and hearth-y, or high-falutin’ and extreme? Green and healthy, or rich and sumptuous? Can it possibly be all things to all people?

I have a newer version of the book, but the one that's burned indelibly in my mind is the copy of my mother's book published in 1962.   Its familiar aqua-colored cover is literally stuffed to bursting with recipes, old mimeograph sheets and magazine articles about entertaining from her house party heydays in the sixties and seventies, now tenuously held together by a series of rubber bands.

I'm not kidding—it was my favorite book growing up—right up there with the Little House on the Prairie series and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.  Featuring every ingredient from blood (a ‘ desirable thickener’ for sauces and gravies it says) to fish sperm (included in the section on roe and milt  on page 374), it was a fascinating read.

I loved the quaint little drawings featuring the Mystery Hostess, dressed primly in black, her small wrists accented with a very ladylike pearl bracelet or a delicate white ruffle.  Gentle feminine admonitions and fables were sprinkled liberally throughout. From a section titled Pies, Pastes and Filled Pastries: “Whatever the nation, skill in pastry making has been regarded as a worldwide passport to matrimony.  In Hungarian villages, for example, no girl was considered eligible until her strudel dough had become so translucent that her beloved could read the newspaper through it."  Amen, sister!

As I got older, Joy became my Panic Book—a go-to place when I forgot something blindingly simple, like how long to bake a potato in the oven, or what ingredients go in pie dough. Because to the JOC, there is no such thing as a stupid question. 

Maybe the Joy of Cooking shouldn’t even try to match the hipness cookbooks of today—there's absolutley nothing wrong with being a retro receptacle of sentimentality.   

Leave Britney Alone...

(Originally Published: November 2007)

In the mornings I listen to drivetime radio on the way to work—the kind hosted by dynamic duos who’s names usually begin with the same letter—hereafter referred to as M&M—and whose lineup feature a string of music and current events chatter.  The topic this particular day was live stage performances, asking the question – do the artists match up to the hype?

Somehow they managed to get a snippet recorded from a Britney Spears’ concert—specifically an isolated audio of her mike.  They played it on air—the sound of Brit's voice was woefully out of tune, and extremely winded—very similar to the leaked tape of Linda McCartney’s vocals during a Wings concert (the difference being, Linda wasn’t actually winded, as she provided only backup vocals for Paul, not dancing).

After playing it, the hosts then proceeded to rag mercilessly on Britney, suggesting that the recording put into doubt whether she really had any talent to begin with, and intimating that she used recorded vocals as a backup.  M&M then had listeners call in to relate their worst concert experiences. Almost to a man (and woman), whether it was about off-key and out-of-sync harmonies, or overly breathy vocals, the primary complaint was that the stage performance never lived up to their expectations of the recording.

One guy said he attended a Sting concert and was really disappointed. When asked the reason why—Was the band out of tune? Did Sting do too much improvisation/variation on the vocals?—the caller was vague, saying something like, “I dunno…I just wanted him to sing old Police songs or something...” and went on to say that the songs he did do were just…”different”.  It’s as if audiences have been so conditioned by seeing and hearing perfectly produced content on CDs, TV and the internet, that it’s built up the expectation that the live performance should replicate that experience note for note—even down to being able to control the playlist, which the Sting concert-goer seemed to imply with his complaints.

On top of that, the natural gap between the recording and the live performance is widened these days by the ability of studio engineers to sweeten and manipulate vocal tracks with programs  that can add depth, vibrato and even tone to the tone deaf, like pulling a voice out of thin air. In the past, artists weren’t called no-talent hacks if they changed up the delivery of a hit song, or sounded a little rough around the edges. People were grateful for the experience of just being there, knowing that’s what made a live performance unique.  Now there it seems live fans possess an extremely low tolerance for imperfection of any sort.

The specific complaints about Britney related to her lack of vocal control and tonality, as well as her use of lipsyncing (damned if you do, damned if you don’t with her it seems). While the radio hosts did acknowledge how difficult it is to dance and sing simultaneously, they still intimated she was ‘past her prime’, and a fraud as well.

I would beg to differ. 
The pressure from audiences (like M&M's radio listeners) causes many pop performers—I won’t call them singers—to feel that they have to have a backing vocal track just to keep up with the hype. Hence the amount of dancers, stagecraft and pyrotechnics present in today’s concerts.

When it comes to a ‘live performance’, according to audience’s clearly professed standards of what they want in a concert, Britney (up until recently) has been giving people exactly what they expect: a reasonable facsimile of a music video come to life onstage.

She just has to get back on track (literally).

On A Side Note:
With the invention of things like the Vocaloid—a computerized voice synthesizer—maybe humans will ultimately be eliminated from the recording equation:

 

Making the “Is it Live, or is it Memorex” argument a moot point...

 

Crime and Punishment

The story about the Texas judge who spanked his 16-year-old daughter is now making the rounds on the 24-hour news merry-go-cycle. I don’t know how many of you have witnessed someone discipline their child in public and wished you’d said something, but the story may have spurred these customers in a local Houston department store to take action, giving new meaning to the phrase 'It takes a village.'  Are we seeing a real shift in how people view corporal punshment? Or is it just that people with more non-traditional views about the subject are becoming more vocal? 

The only time I spanked my daughter was when she was around 2 years old, for the 'crime' of attempting to put her finger in an electrical outlet. One swat to the bottom, and the look on her face said ‘You’re going to have to hit me a lot harder than that for me to stop’. It at that moment I realized: 

1. I was not willing to inflict that much pain on my child in order to ‘teach her a lesson’
2. How was I to teach her that getting physical was the wrong way handle a situation if I used corporal punishment?
3. I was going to have to come up with a more creative way to discipline her 

My parents spanked me, but one of the most effective punishments I remember getting was after I stole a packet of salad dressing from the store. My mother discovered the ‘non-purchase’ while unpacking the groceries that evening, and I thought for sure the next step was going to be her reaching for my dad’s belt (the 1970s double-wide kind).

Instead, she took a surprisingly different approach: the Fred Flintstone Stars on Ice show was supposed to come on that night, combining a young girl’s two loves:  figure skating and cartoons. I really, desperately wanted to watch it, but despite my pleas to never do it again, she held steady on her punishment, sending me to bed right after dinner with no TV.  Apparently being denied the vision of cartoon characters with heads the size of small planetoids performing a series of clumsy pirouettes on ice had a big impact on me, as I never shoplifted anything again.

So there you have it: I was spanked, but do not spank. What's your take? Do you feel the physical punishment you received built character? Held you back? Or were you raised by parents who used more creative means of punishment? Are you doing a 180 when it comes to spanking, and going in the total opposite direction now that you're raising your own kids? 

 

A Hole In the Head….

I must say, it’s really heartening to find a section on gay parenting among the Houston Chronicle’s blogs. It's called Gayby Boom, and this most recent post is about a dilemma some parents face – ear piercing of infants. Here in Texas, a lot of Hispanics have their baby daughter’s ears pierced as a rite of passage and a mark of femininity.

I myself was not allowed to get my ears pierced until I was 17, and not after my mom (who was a nurse) sat me down at the kitchen table and recite a litany of what could go wrong:

1. I could get keloids (i.e., excessive scarring)
2. a German Shepherd could come along and rip the earring out of my earlobe
3. I could get into a girl fight and get my ear ripped
4. my earlobe could get infected, causing the underlying cartilage to subsequently shrivel and wear away, making my whole ear fall off

Unfortunately for her, all these Halloween-Cujo-Fight Club scenarios paled in comparison to the years of teenage social ostracism I experienced while wearing those embarrassing clip-ons.  So my parents relented,  and my dad—a doctor—took me to his office and poked two more ‘holes’ in my head (as my mother puts it).

Later, during my rebellious college years, I went to the Piercing Pagoda at Highland Mall and had them put two more in.   

I let my own daughter get hers pierced when she was 8, partly because she asked for it, but mostly to give her what I'd been denied for all those years: a sense of belonging through conformism.  She really wanted it, in spite of her extreme fear of doctors’ offices and hypodermic needles—so much so that it used to take both me and her dad to hold her down just to get a shot. Come to think of it, maybe I should have done it when she was a baby...

Make sure to take the survey at the end of Gayby Boom to see which side of the fence you’re on  - and feel free to leave comments here about your own experiences (girls or boys - I remember seeing quite a few 11-year old boys with earrings, and wonder how their parents came to that decision).