Los Angelenos Are Crazy

I hate to generalize again, but there you have it. There is no other way to describe the 'characters' I know from that city. My old neighbor, a woman I never shared a meal with when we lived next door, came to the city for a visit. She had phoned a few weeks ago expressing an interest in having lunch. Since she was always personable, I said 'of course.'

The lunch was fine. We sat at the Mercer Kitchen, eating and talking about various topics. I found myself asking lots of questions since my knowledge of her life was not substantiative beyond her career--set designer--and marriage status--single, but dating same person. I asked if she was currently working on a new project to which she replied she was working on two, one of which is a children's book. I thought her response intriguing since she's single, and does not have children. Was it possible she had been a secret aficionado of children's picture books? I know as voraciously as I read, I hadn't glanced a children's book until my son entered our home. So, the fact that a childless, single woman read enough children's books to feel confident to write one was quite intriguing indeed.

Here's where the craziness became apparent. She doesn't read children's books beyond the books she'd read from her childhood. And her book, based on her two dogs as main characters--yes, she's one of those crazy dog people--is a story about the dogs (young children) who are left by their mother with a credit card because she has to get to work, and therefore, doesn't have time to feed her two young children before their first day of school. The kids, being precocious tots, want to eat sushi, so off to Japan they go with the, said, credit card. Instead of green eggs and ham, they eat green sushi. Instead of an American school, presumably to attend Kindergarten, they go to a Japanese school where the learn Japanese. Hmmmm....

Where does one begin? The fact I didn't laugh out loud in her face with incredulity is a sheer feat of restraint on my part. I didn't know how to delicately put it to her that even the most inane kids books are based on reality. The idea of a mother, in our current culture of hyper-parenting, leaving her kids alone with a credit card to feed themselves is beyond implausible. I did try and point out that perhaps there should be a babysitter there to whom the mother leaves the credit card with the instruction to take the kids to whatever restaurant the kids desire. She thought this a very good idea since she hadn't thought of the need for some adult presence in the story. Again, where does one begin? I told her that there are kids in our world who are left alone for whatever reasons, but those parents are usually involved in some institutional system: welfare, child social services. And the fact the mother has the means to leave a credit card probably rules out this possibility.

There is something marvelously adventurous, courageous even, about people getting the gumption to try and do things without previous experience or training. I mean, she is someone who has never, ever written a children's book. And yes, this story may not be the most telling of her capabilities after she wraps her head around how parenting and children work in this 21st century. She may very well be the next Kevin Henkes or Dr. Seuss for all we know. And if not for this gumption to try, well, she may never know whether this little idea of hers, this impulse to try this thing could open her life to an entire new direction. I applaud this spirit, such a part of the mythology of the wild, wild west, something people who are drawn to this part of the world inhabit so completely.

But again, as I sat and listened to her rambling on about the process of writing this book, I couldn't help marveling at how crazy all of it sounded to me, this single childless woman writing children's books. After our thorough discussion of her project, we moved on to other safer topics. As I left her in Soho, I walked away thinking what an interesting afternoon it had been. And how it takes so many kinds of people to make up the world.