Green Options

A long time ago, when I was very little, I was born. This was way back in 1967, before cell phones, but after butter churns.

I grew up in a very tiny suburb of central New Jersey, where I attended an elementary school named after an astronaut. Guess the astronaut and you’ll win the opportunity to send me a Terry’s Raspberry Chocolate Ball.

I was barely a teenager when MTV first hit the airwaves, and as we had just gotten cable tv, this was an awesome time to be alive. I fell in love with Nena and her 99 Luftballons. I fell in love with Madonna, as I burned up for her love. I fell in love with Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go’s, dreaming of the day I could seal her lips with my kiss.

Eventually I moved on to other hobbies, like cross-country running and Pink Floyd and, eventually, an intense relationship with Bruce Springsteen. He, along with Berke Breathed and Garry Trudeau, made me truly fall in love with words.

In the fall of 1985 I enrolled in college, where I proceeded to ignore at least half my classes, in favor of working at the campus newspaper and radio station. These two areas caused my love of words to explode and gel at the same time, like a supernova.

After college (no, I didn’t graduate, I just up and left after my fiancé broke it off to date my friends), I moved (read: Fled) to Northern Virginia, where my brother and sister-in-law lived. I got a job as tech weenie for a small business, and spent the next 13 years hopping from job to job, learning more than I cared to about the realities of customer service from the other side of the phone. Disgusted with the apathy of employers and co-workers, and unable to keep my trap shut about it, I took the opportunity to convince a special someone to give me a shot as a copywriter. Fortunate for some, unfortunate for others, this job was in Los Angeles. But I was so done with snow and getting fired a lot, so I left my family behind and sought out the life of paid writer. As the kids say, Wh00t!1!!

After a few writing gigs, including both copywriting and feature writing for a real magazine, I noticed my then girlfriend’s kids were unhappy in daycare. So I thought about it for about 45 seconds, realized that they were being raised by strangers at daycare (and that daycare costs were almost as much as I was bringing in), so I raised my hand up very gently and said, “Uh, hey, why don’t I quit my magazine gig and raise the kidlets myself?”

It’s been quite a few years since that fateful moment, and I couldn’t be happier. That girlfriend became my wife, those kids became *my* kids, and I am now a stay-at-home dad who happily does the groceries, the laundry, the everything-my-family-needs-in-order-to-do-their-job.

Oh, and, because I’m such a strident feminist, when certain people ask what I do for a living, I say “I’m a housewife”. Proudest job title I’ve ever held.