The Merits of Knowing When to Quit

Our society sends a pervasive message of never-say-die. Quitting is widely considered a bad thing. From horrible jobs to toxic relationships to our workout regimen, the message is that quitters never win and winners never quit. Stick with it. Keep going. Push yourself and you’ll be successful. It’s all fine and good sometimes. It’s certainly not healthy to constantly be quitting things, or writing people off without really trying. But where is the line between perseverance and self-destruction??

I see my friends staying in bad relationships because if they leave they’re considered a quitter, abandoning someone they’re supposed to care about. Shoot, I’ve done it myself. Thankfully I put my proverbial bitch hat on and left before I married the guy I’d been actively allowing to destroy me from the inside out for three-and-a-half years. And why did I stay?? Because my friends told me that I write people off too easily, that I should give this guy a chance. And I thought they were right. So I stayed, and when I left I was so angry with myself for ignoring my needs for so long. That’s not healthy, either.

Who of us hasn’t had a soul-deadening job that was killing us?? Of course, people need a livelihood, and sometimes that’s enough to make us stay in bad situations for longer than we may want to. But eventually we leave. We quit. And we feel better for it.

The idea that giving up and moving on is bad is especially disturbing for me because now I see this with my daughter. She’s stuck with her sport through all manner of difficult times and obstacles that would have crushed the dreams of a lot of people, and I have endless respect for her for doing so. But now she’s applying that persistence to her pursuit of a school that her father and I can ill afford the tuition to, and the lesson being learned is a harsh one.

My daughter has always done well in school. From preschool through 8th grade she had the opportunity to attend an exclusive school for gifted kids in Seattle's independent school system. It was a tremendous gift since her dad and I don’t make the kind of money necessary to pay for tuition ourselves. Her 7th and 8th grade years she got a full ride: $20,000 a year plus a month-long study abroad in Turkey, paid for. This past year, like so many other 8th grade families in the independent school system, we did the whole high school application thing. It’s a lot like college, only with more expensive schools. I went to the meetings and open houses, drove to the study sessions, made phone calls, sent emails, filled out paperwork, and paperwork, and paperwork. But none of the kids who applied for financial aid got into the schools they’d applied at, and my daughter was one of them. She was waitlisted at three of the schools, and the one she got into outright she did not get financial aid for. They needed a $30,000 commitment in order for her to be able to attend.

She cried. A lot. And I don’t blame her. We heard all the rumors and the stories about the slacker kids who got into the good schools because their parents have big bank accounts. I hearken back to the fact that none of the kids in her 8th grade class who applied for financial aid got into the schools. I understand that times are tough, and the schools need to make money to stay open and in the kind of high-end service that’s expected of them, but ultimately the message these kids learned is that fancy schools are for rich kids. It doesn’t matter how hard you work; getting good grades and having terrific recommendations is all fine and dandy until your parents can’t waltz in with a $30,000 check and a $20,000 donation. It was a difficult lesson for a kid whose hard work has been duly rewarded her entire life. For it to not matter all of a sudden was a tough pill to swallow, and I felt terrible for her.

So she wound up in public school, which she still gripes and bitches about. Now we’re three weeks into her freshman year; her first year in a public school, where the teachers and administrators give a big song and dance about how they don’t want kids to fall through the cracks and then lose her registration paperwork the day before school started. On the first day of school, the bus skipped her stop and she had to be driven. And away she goes, sliding right through the cracks.

This is what all her hard work has led up to. This is what she gets for trying hard and doing a good job. Because her parents aren’t rich.

Now, the process of applying to schools is arduous. You fill out all the paperwork, get your references, transcripts, grades, recommendations in order and then pay an application fee for each school applied to. Last year it was $90 at each of the 4 schools. Then there’s test prep for the Independent School Entrance Exam (ISEE), which runs a cool $525, not including the diagnostic test or any of the $15 practice tests. Then the test costs $125 to take. Then the parents are charged $36 for one school’s financial aid application, and $40 for the remaining three. And then there’s the price of gas, driving to and from the schools on open house nights and for meetings with the admissions people. Expensive, and exhausting.

And now she wants to do it all again. After the tears and disappointment, she seems convinced that she didn’t get into any of these schools because she didn’t do a good enough job, and that kills me. Part of me really admires her persistence, but in this case I think it’s a desperate and destructive Hail Mary.

Maybe I’m wrong?? Maybe things will be different this time?? Maybe I’m too cynical?? Frankly, after watching her break down as many times as I did as she learned what the world is really all about, I don’t know how I could be anything other than pissed off. I don’t want to jump through all these flaming hoops again, and I sure as shit don’t want to stand back and watch my kid get her hopes smashed by some mean old rich people who only reward kids from moneyed families.

I can’t help but wish that the kid just knew when to throw in the towel and figure something else out. What would be so disgraceful about that??

Them That Can't, Cheer.

Okay, so before I launch into my diatribe about how silly and degrading cheer is, I feel I must clarify something off the top. Cheer in this geographic area is not what it is in other parts of the country, at least not for the most part. There are talented tumblers and stunters and whatnot, but it’s usually just what it is: girls who wear short skirts and yell for attention. I know enough about competitive cheer, which is pretty dang-ola athletic, and that’s not really what I’m talking about here.

In any case, I don’t understand cheer. I guess part of that comes from being a gymnast my whole life, where them that can do and them that can’t, cheer. Maybe part of my attitude is tied to that idea. But, really. I have a young daughter who is a talented athlete. She’s been so all her life. Now she’s talking about wanting to cheer. Dude, I sat through a performance of the cheerleaders at her new high school. They’re cute and fun and peppy and all, but they’re just a bunch of girls in short skirts with pom poms. They’re not dancers, tumblers, acrobats, or gymnasts. Their moves are so rudimentary that I’ve seen recreational cheer classes for nine-year-olds that have more proverbial meat and potatoes to them. So, what’s the deal with this?? Why are we still encouraging girls to do this?? I was unfortunate enough to be sitting in the front row of the gymnasium, so I got an eyeful of each girl’s “spankies.”

And, really, folks. Let’s just call these what they is: panties. Underwear. Teenage girls flashing their underwear in a socially sanctioned environment. Usually we wear our underwear underneath our clothes, and when we don’t someone calls us trashy. Not cheerleaders. It’s not only encouraged but required for their underwear to be out. Where else in polite society can we say this??

There is this pervasive idea that I’m some kind of pedo for noticing when there’s a crotch in my face, but the fact of the matter is that so has everyone else: they just don’t say it out loud because they’re afraid someone will call them a pedo. But it’s a crotch. In. My. Face. A child crotch. And underage crotch. A crotch I did not invite into my field of vision, but there it is. It’s weird and fucked up, but people love it!! They act like it’s nothing. Go, team. Rah-rah-whatrever. Every dude in the place has his eyes glued to an underage girl’s cha-cha-cha whether we wish to talk about it or not. These sensible suburban moms don’t appear to want to discuss it. That’s for damn sure. They’ll tell you you’re disgusting if you say that their daughter’s pussy is out. But there it is. Like Matthew Perry in Three to Tango, “butt, crotch, butt, crotch, butt, crotch.” Apparently the audience is supposed to be so wowed by the girls’ mad skills that we’re not supposed to notice her parts on parade?? Or we’re supposed to notice but not say we notice?? I don’t know. These girls are perfectly capable of doing something substantial with their lives, and yet they’re encouraged to go out into public and bend at the waist to show support for their school. Boys play football, and football is important. Girls stand back and tell the boys how great they are by kicking high and placing their naughty bits on display.

What’s so meritorious about that?? What skill other than the most primitive hip flexibility and a fake smile does that take?? And why does society still support this garbage??