May 5th, 2009

The headline on the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times caught my eye.  "When the Cellphone Teaches Sex Education", it said.  It may be a reflex reaction for people of my generation, proudly claiming the 60's as our credentials, to scoff at yet another example of texting, twittering, and subjects secretly beyond our everyday comprehension (and this after we have finally integrated that damned e-mail into at least our professional lives).  But no one can argue that the texting written about in the Times last weekend is a good thing.  The Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention campaign of North Carolina has launched the Birds and Bees Text Line directed at 14-19 year olds.  Kids can text their questions, no holds barred, to one of the trained responders on duty, and answers are texted back quickly, just like the kids are used to.  Texting, by definition, requires the answers to be short and direct.  Impressed with the success of such a simple and effective idea, I read on approvingly but didn't get emotionally hooked until the end of the article when one of the responders told of receiving a text one evening with the question "If I was raped when I was little and just had sex was it technically my first time when I was raped or when I recently had sex?" 

I recently got together with a dear friend of mine from college theatre days.  He was about to go in for cancer surgery and we had a good talk about my book and my own cancer experience.  It made me wonder how different my bone marrow transplant "transformation" may have been if I could have had a computer in my room with access to e-mail and everyone in my address book.  Instead, I wrote letters in longhand to those closest to me, asked the nurses to assist in finding a stamp and mailing the letters, and waited hopefully each day for the mail to be delivered.  Such old fashioned letters rarely bothered with the minutiae of a typical electronic transmission, such as the weather or where you went for dinner, but instead were more focused on feelings and hopes and things that came straight from the heart.  Those precious declarations of caring, in my situation, were a lifeline to be treasured and held and touched, read and reread.  Many of them are quoted in my book as the perfect reflection of those difficult and emotional times, now a stack of envelopes with faded postmarks, some so precious they are held in my small safe in a zip lock bag.  All this may sound odd coming from someone who just wrote a book, telling absolutely everything, in a quest for the ultimate healing.  But this access to electronic instant communication may or may not inspire the kind of telling I did in my book.  In fact, it may discourage doing so as it is so instantaneous, one wonders just how much thought can go into transmissions that keep coming at lightning speed.  And who has time to do much internal contemplation, the very heart of emotional growth and transformation, when so much time is spent on modern instant communication?  Are we always thinking of connecting with someone else through a device instead of connecting with ourselves?

Justice Souter comes to mind as he announces his retirement.  He sits on the Supreme Court, a lifetime job if he so desires.  But he is retiring to get his life back so to speak, voluntarily giving up the ultimate job.  He has no computer on his desk at work, no television in his old family home in the woods of New England that is filled with books instead, and writes his opinions in longhand with a fountain pen.  There is something about the image of a voracious reader, who shapes our society with his intellect, writing with a beautiful pen rather than clicking away on a keyboard that fills me with confidence.  Maybe that explains why he didn't live up to the conservative expectations of his appointer, the first President Bush.  He actually thought and contemplated and acted on his conscience. 

Kids today have complete and private access to each other.  When I was an adolescent, I lived abroad with my Air Force family in Turkey.  We had no telephone, no television, often no electricity (I remember writing my report on Clara Barton by candlelight during a routine power outage), and radio in Turkish only.  If I wanted to see my best friend, I walked to her house and hoped she would be there.  Our sleepovers afforded the supreme luxury of unlimited access to each other as we spent hours in bed after lights out discussing anything and everything that mattered to twelve year old girls while giving "turns" with a plastic back scratcher deep into the night.  Would there have been anything left to talk about if we had already e-mailed and texted everything?  Would we have spent our evening texting all our friends who weren't there instead of confiding in each other?  Would there be an unexpressed thought still left in our heads?  Would there be the secret intimacy of late night talks that shaped our view of ourselves?  I have no way of knowing.  But just as I wouldn't give up coming of age with the Beatles for anything, I wouldn't give up those late nights in Turkey with my friend, Judy, either.  We were so tender, I can't help but believe that introducing electronic media into the coming of age process may toughen it up a little.  Maybe that is a good thing in this day and age.  But tender was a trust, an intimacy you shared with a friend, not a thought that may end up on the internet someday. 

I also can't help but wonder how my family life may have changed if my sexually obsessed father would have had a computer to satisfy some of his hefty sexual needs.  I do know that in his later years, one of my sons reported that he saw pornography on my father's computer.  But I saw some on my son's computer, too.  Seems it's pretty common.  Facebook has a college degreed Porn Squad that gets paid $50,000 a year each to monitor photographs and postings on the social networking site to insure compliance with company policy regarding appropriateness of material for the site.   Facebook works consistently with law enforcement to help solve crimes because so many clues lie buried in the pages of the site.  It is so addictive that even when on a crime spree, it seems that people can't help but check their Facebook page which can then be tracked to determine whereabouts.  Facebook just welcomed its 200 millionth user.  And there are college courses taught about Facebook.  Buck up, you children of the 60's, and remember how radical we were in our decade of social change.  This is their version of radical.  And who are we to judge?  Remember what we thought of our parents when they did that? 

Look at the bright side.  My oncologist at the Mayo Clinic used the internet to organize a worldwide group of people suffering from a rare disease and communicated with them and brought them together at an international conference.  His nurse beamed when she told me how he was treated like a rock star for what he had done for them.  As a former high risk cancer patient, I can only imagine what it was like for those people to be in touch with each other and have a chance to meet.  And what about the way cell phones give people the opportunity to call for emergency help if they need it or make that one last call to a loved one if they are about to go down in a skyscraper or in a plane.  As for me, I will finish this blog post, shoot the accompanying photo, download it onto my Mac and then the site, and click publish. 

I promise you that this Silver Platter Girl will find her electronic place in the world.  Anywhere a young girl wants to know whether her first time was when she was raped or when she chose to have consensual sex for the first time is where I'll be.  Just in case she needs my story to help tell her own. 

SPG