The World According to Prudence
Filed Under All Posts, Prudence Baird, Rants | 20 Comments
NASCAR is not a sport, Ann Coulter is not a woman, 98 percent of people who drink diet sodas are fat and there is no such thing as a healthy tan.
People who say, “To tell the truth…” are about to lie. Ditto for people who begin with “Truthfully,…” and “To be honest,….”
When an armed, confrontational policeman can enter your home without a search warrant, handcuff and arrest you for freaking out that he’s even there to begin with, our nation is already suffering from a more insidious form of government than the threat of a government willing to offer each and every American universal healthcare. Read more
Friend Request
Filed Under All Posts, Group Posts, Prudence Baird, Relationships, Technology | 21 Comments
Prudence Baird reflects on midlife connections in the age of social media.
I know why baby boomers are joining Facebook faster than Bernie Madoff’s victims are moving in with their adult children.
We’re not done yet. We’re not done dominating popular culture as defined by our presence in the media, including the “social media” like Facebook and MySpace.
We’re not done with—even though we’ve long exceeded—our 15 minutes of fame. Each. We’re not done prancing in the spotlight—even if for some of us, it’s our first time. Read more
Is it Too Late Not to Have Kids?
Filed Under All Posts, Parenting, Prudence Baird | 10 Comments
For Prudence Baird, shopping for camping gear with her teenage son makes climbing mountains child’s play.
Ah, teenagers. You gotta love ‘em. Or not.
Just at the time your peers who had the smarts to drop their litters in their twenties or early thirties—or perhaps the smartest ones who decided not to have kids at all—are decorating a second home in the Hamptons or having their teeth capped and eyelids “done,” you are hauling an ungrateful hunk of hormones to R.E.I. to buy a backpack for his school’s mandatory weeklong trek in the Green Mountains; an outing designed to build esprit-de-corps.
A typical exchange begins subtly. “I don’t see why I have to go.”
Like a symphony, it builds, “What’s the point of going camping?” and “Why did you make me go to this school?”
Here comes the bridge: “Why did you force us to leave Los Angeles?” Read more
Once Upon a Childhood…
Filed Under All Posts, Family, Parenting, Prudence Baird | 13 Comments
Prudence Baird is transported back to a time when her boys were small; a time rich with storybooks, morning hugs, inquiry and magic.
Mother’s Day has come and gone—again bringing with it all the reminders that this phase of life soon will pass. Lumpy breakfasts in bed and hand-drawn cards, both lovingly crafted by children eager to please, have been replaced with brunch out and Hallmark cards personalized only as a grumpy teenager can do—with a signature.
And so it is that under a starlit dome outside my bedroom window, as Gemini’s twins arc overhead and the grandfather clock begins to strike midnight, my restless mind mulls over a bittersweet discovery made earlier that day as I trawled through a neglected drawer looking for letter-sized file folders.
My probing hand settled on a smooth plastic stick, a foot long, with rounded ends—a child’s toy; a magic wand mixed in with old pens, highlighters, Post-it notes and rolls of tape. The wand’s cool resin holds inside two liquids—one heavy and cobalt blue, one light and clear. In this embryonic fluid dances a teaspoon or so of silvery sparkling stars and tiny gold crescent moons that float from one end of the wand to the other.
I hold the wand to the light. As the particles swim to and fro, I am transported Read more
The Dawn of Neurodiversity
Filed Under All Posts, Health, Prudence Baird | 11 Comments
A "brainbow " of neurons in the hippocampus of a transgenic mouse
April is World Autism Awareness Month. In the United States today, one of every 150 children born will be diagnosed with autism, an incurable neuro-developmental disease that impacts an individual’s ability to interact socially, to communicate and to manage his or her own behavior around transitions, new routines, people and new information.
Prudence Baird is getting a master’s certificate degree in Autism Spectrum Disorders and has a personal interest in brain development, as her youngest son suffered anoxia at birth and has a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome. She shares her views on a different kind of diversity.
One of my dreams is time travel to the time when humans numbered in the millions instead of the billions. Doesn’t that seem exciting—raising a glass of ale with Wm. Shakespeare, hanging with Jesus on the Mount, seeing firsthand the Great Pyramid at Giza being built?
But let’s not fool ourselves. If we should suddenly drop out of the ether into an earlier time, it wouldn’t be that easy for us to blend in with the natives. Our words (even if they were understood) would be misconstrued and misinterpreted. What we take for granted—having our own teeth at age 50 or just being able to walk in public as a single woman—would be considered weird and somewhat threatening. Chances are we’d be burned at the stake or beaten with sticks within moments of touchdown.
Our brains, our reasoning abilities and our collective unconscious have evolved over the millennia, much more so than our bodies. Read more
To Buy or Not To Buy: Sometimes It’s Best Not to Question
Filed Under All Posts, Prudence Baird, Relationships | 17 Comments
What do you do when a friend—or worse, relative—writes a book? Are you expected to buy it? Or, should you say you’ll buy it, and then don’t? If you buy it, do you have to read it?
What if the book is a nine-pound, seventy-dollar obscure tome on chess entitled, Chess Advantage in Black & White?
I haven’t played chess since I was beaten by a six-year-old back in the 1980s. I’m sure my brother-in-law is still waiting for me to show up and ask for his John Hancock on the copy I promised to buy (but never did). I have more than enough unread books lying around this house—some of which I even want to read.
The decision is a little less black and white (ahem) when the book is affordable, lightweight and fluffy. I apprehensively bought—then gobbled up in an unexpectedly delicious afternoon—my friend Carine’s juicy memoir, Sex, Cheese & French Fries. Read more
Let the Good (Prozac) Times Roll!
Filed Under All Posts, Health, Humor, Prudence Baird | 15 Comments
Nowadays, physicians whip out the prescription pad when women my age cross their thresholds. Hot flashes? Prozac! Empty-nest blues? Prozac! Husband suffering midlife crisis? Prozac. (Why the wife must medicate herself when Goofus makes a damned fool out of himself is beyond me, but hell, if being stoned helps women avoid committing manslaughter, I’m all for it!)
My first brush with Prozac came in 1989, after I had been unceremoniously dumped by a chinless mama’s boy. I’m not sure which depressed me more—that I had settled for a guy who still wet his pants, or the fact that said pants-wetter had dumped me first.
The next business day, I was first in line for legal drugs of any kind. The psychiatrist, who looked to be about 12 years old, pressed several samples of 150 mg. Prozac into my hands. “Take your first one after dinner tonight. You won’t feel any effects for two weeks,” he promised.
Like hell I won’t! Read more
