Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

I’m not a fan of restricting free speech generally, but in the life of my household, I’m occasionally forced to censure words. The most recent one that hit my chopping block is the “B word,” as Henry and I call it. It’s a word that I hear all too often these days. I’ve never liked the word and always believed that anyone feeling it was lacking in imagination. But when it’s coming from children—kids who use this word to express discontent, disdain and to distance themselves from the activities and sentiments of their elders—it really gets my goat.

The “B word” of course is “bored.”

The idea for banning the “B word” in my household came in November over lunch with my friend and CPA Hattie when she and I agreed that the penalty for any child who says he is bored should be the assignment of chores.

“Kids who complain about being bored clearly don’t have enough work to do,” she said. Hattie and I compared notes from our childhoods with a common theme being how hard we worked and contributed to household function. Our childhoods were both marked by loss—hers by the premature death of her cherished father when she was seven, mine by the premature banishment of my father from the household to my parents’ divorce when I was nine.

“I was never bored,” Hattie commented, “because I was working all the time. Any time I had off was precious and savored.”

The same could be said for me, as I cleaned, cooked and kept house to support for my single, middle-aged mother who taught freshman English and studied for her Ph.D. in American Literature at the same time. (In a reversal of the Mom helping her child with her homework, I used to drill Mother on her studies, reading her passages from literature that she had to identify.)

So when Henry trotted out the “B word” to describe his feelings about being dragged off to see “The Great Debaters” on Christmas Day, he didn’t exactly gain any brownie points from his personal Santa.

This flick had been on my list ever since hearing Tavis Smiley’s interview of Denzel Washington on NPR a few days before Christmas.

So I bought the tickets for Henry, his father (now my ex) Frank and even forked over $8 for popcorn and Sprite to complete the picture. But once we stepped inside the world of the Jim Crow-era Texas of the 1930s, inside the world of the now-famous Wiley College debate team did I know that I’d made a wise and inspiring choice.

Of course, in reading the long list of cast and crew from Harpo Productions after it was all over, it was apparent that this was no low-budget offering. Backed by Oprah’s production company, this film was made with all the bells and whistles available to filmmakers these days. It even received the virtually impossible to obtain permission to shoot scenes at Harvard University.

But “The Great Debaters” got to me and everyone in my small party. It is a movie that colored my day the following day and stayed with me all week. It is about something. About a time when people had to work and struggle, when the stakes were real. It is about a group of people—largely forgotten to history—talented, driven, erudite individuals who had to push the outside of the envelope to lay the groundwork for generations that followed. They pushed to gain rights and respect on the local and ultimately the national stage, but most importantly inside themselves, as Wiley’s debate coach Melvin Tolson (played by Denzel Washington) instilled in them.

I’m a sucker for pieces that display period costumes and sets, especially from the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s—my parents’ era. And I loved watching James Farmer Sr. (played by Forest Whitaker) drill his namesake son (played by Denzel “no relation” Whitaker) on bibical quotes and literary allusions. It brought back memories to see the Tolson character pecking on his portable typewriter, sending out missives of hope, of challenge across America, challenging other teams to debate. I’m old enough to remember when the U.S. mail carried news that could shake up your world, when instant communication was far from common place.

How thrilling was it to see my Henry, at 10, so thoroughly engaged in the action on screen. “Was it against the law to hang and burn a black man?” he wanted to know. When we got to the “great debate” at Harvard University, Henry leaned over to me and asked if I’d ever studied at Memorial Hall where the scene was shot. (Yes, I told him, your father and I used to take exams there.)

Learning after-the-credit-roll fact that the historical, victorious debate of 1935 in which the Wiley team reigned supreme took place not at Harvard but at USC did dampen the adults’ enthusiasm for the film (you’re presenting corrective history; why fictionalize a significant part of it?, Frank and I groused).

Still, even despite this serious lapse, the movie did what great movies are supposed to: transported us to another time and place. Taught Henry a little history. Reminded us middle-aged folk how fleeting time is, how much the world has changed in our lifetimes and how it will change in the future.

When Henry and I returned home, he had his work cut out for him. He got off easy this time, after all, it was still Christmas Day. But Henry didn’t complain—even seemed to revel it—when he scooped droppings from the cats’ boxes and gathered up the trash. And the good news is, he hasn’t used the “B word” since that day.