Some Advice I Got from my Step-Mom, Once

I was seventeen years old and kaa-razy about one “K,” my very first girlfriend. She made me want to be smarter, better looking, more driven, a better dresser/kisser/person, i.e., all of the things I wasn’t when I was... sixteen. The only problem was, she wasn’t crazy about me.

So I sat K down and told her I was crazy about her and asked her if she was crazy about me.

Having only dated me for one month, being only seventeen herself, and being not crazy about me, K didn’t know. She wasn’t sure.

Thanks to some advice I’d recently gotten from my step-mom, I told K “Well, I don’t want to date anyone who isn’t absolutely-crazy about me!”

So, we broke up.

I was devastated.
I told all my friends that it was “Better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all.”
Blah, blah, blah...

What was my step-mom’s advice? I shouldn’t date someone unless they’re absolutely-crazy about me.

Fast forward a decade: I’m 27 and single.

However, in spite of this occasionally frustrating fact, I still think my step-mom’s advice is sound, but I also like to think I’ve learned a few things about it.

Thing 1: The advice actually cuts in both directions, i.e., not only should I not date people who aren’t crazy about me, but I shouldn’t date people I’m not crazy about.

Thing 2: What it means for me to be crazy about someone (I seem to need to feel compelled to better myself, ala Pip in Great Expectations... Yeah...), isn’t necessarily the same as what it means for them to be crazy about me.

Occupy Lake Oswego?

“I’m sure it’ll be respectful.”

That’s what my coworker said when she told me about the “Occupy the Lake” event originally planned for Saturday, March 10th.

I, however, wasn’t so sure.

I know how people in the Portland-Metro area tend to view Lake Oswego.

And I, too, had read the “Lake Affront” article in the March 7th Willamette Week.

Respectful isn’t the word that comes to mind.

Believe me, I get it: Lake Oswego can seem awfully rich, awfully white, and awfully full of itself.

I get it because I grew up here. Because I left for college and, for a time, saw exactly and only what so many people in the Portland-Metro Area seem to see.

And yet, now, I work here, live here, and, strange as it may seem for someone in their twenties with a couple of degrees in philosophy, no less, love here.

I love that Lake Oswego is very easy to dislike and problematize (racist tweets!?!), and pretty hard to understand.
I love that it sits on a lake and a river.
I love that it’s still got farmland, hidden in its hills.
I love that, for every Lake Oswego mom with fairly obvious plastic surgery, there are eight or so whom seem to have figured out the trick to aging well.
That for every a$$hole I meet, there are ten or so guys I’d love to grab a drink with.
That for every one of those kids I see driving too fast in their parents’ BMWs, there are at least ten kids I’d be damn-proud to call my own, someday, eventually...

I think my feelings towards Lake Oswego are most akin to British theologian/essayist/silly-man G.K. Chesterton’s definition of patriotism and relationship to the universe:

My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it. The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.

Sure, Lake Oswego has its problems, but whose hometown doesn’t?

Dear would-be Lake Occupiers: Having full-access to Lake Oswego has previously been the function of a choice, a choice that many people--including my own parents--have made for themselves and their families; however, as it now appears that this choice was apparently made under the mistaken belief that the lake was private, something like a beautiful back yard for people to share with somewhere around a thousand other people, what is to be done?

I’ve got two questions I think you need to ask yourselves before you try and answer this question: First, if you lived on Lake Oswego and had full-access to the lake, how would you want this situation to be handled? Second, if you really want full-access to Lake Oswego, but currently don’t have it, why aren’t you willing to take the routes that so many have taken before in order to get it?