Family

Building a Better Refrigerator

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(This was one of my columns from 11/5/92. Eerily prescient…)

It’s probably too late for me to get in on the $30 million prize being offered by a group of the nation’s utilities to groups of inventors to build a better refrigerator. But I’ll tell you what – if they want my suggestions, I will only charge them a cool million. I have very simple needs.

The first mistake the utilities are making is in asking a group of scientists to design a better refrigerator. What are they going to do – sit around in a windowless room with their atom and molecule models and talk in numerical equations?

I’ve given this a lot of thought. Refrigerators have occupied a very special place in my life. I figure I’ve spent thousands of hours staring into their vast coldness trying to figure out the mysteries of life and whether or not you can scrape the fur off a piece of bologna, eat it, and still live. Continue reading →

So Many Things To Worry About, So Little Time

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(My newspaper column from The Beach Reporter 8/15/91.)

I am worried that I spend too much time worrying about things. It goes beyond being a mother, although a good amount of my worrying time is directed toward my children. Sometimes my worrying is global in nature. I worry about repression in China, terrorism, and the hole in the ozone layer.

I blame this syndrome partly on CNN, partly on the fact that I read several newspapers a day, and partly on the fact that I am a woman. Men don’t worry about the same things as women.
Men worry about how they are going to pay for college, even though their child is only a year old. Women worry about whether that same child is getting enough green vegetables, and are his feet turning in just a little?

Maybe if I stopped absorbing all this news every day I could lead a happy-go-lucky, worry-free life of ignorance. I wouldn’t know that the lead in the wrapper that seals the cork of wine bottles may cause lead poisoning. I wouldn’t know that my cutting board is a haven for a hundred strains of bacteria. I wouldn’t worry about parasites in sushi, pesticides on apples, or what’s really in a hot dog.

Continue reading →

Baseball Dreams and T-Ball Go Together

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(An essay from my column in The Beach Reporter on 6/11/1992.)

As some of you may have guessed from my last column, baseball is not my favorite spectator sport. At least in football and hockey things move fast. But in baseball you can go half an hour before anything happens to wake you up.

Not so in a T-ball game. For those of you who are unaware of this fabulous sporting event, T-ball is a scaled-down version of baseball for kids who are too young for Little League. Most of the kids are six or seven years old. The teams are mostly boys still, although there is the occasional girl on a team. The girls have their own softball league, but they are allowed to play T-ball or Little League if they choose to.

The big premise in T-ball is that all the kids play different positions on the team and the games are supposed to be low-key and non-competitive. I’ve seen professional hockey games that were less competitive than the average T-ball game. Let’s not forget that the South Bay is full of overachiever, Type-A parents, and that on a baseball field they can’t help but let their true personalities show through. Continue reading →

Please Don’t Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Kathy StevensonLeave a comment

(This column, from 6/4/92, was in The Beach Reporter newspaper.)

I know this will sound blasphemous, but I think that baseball is the most boring game in the world to watch. Actually, I guess that’s not completely true. Golf and bowling are more boring to watch. But baseball is right up there.

I used to go to the occasional Dodger game and pretend to be having a good time. But Picture Day at Dodger Stadium last summer did me in for good.

We started out for the stadium, a happy family of four, looking forward to a pleasant day at Dodger Stadium. We came home not speaking to one another and needing extensive family counseling.

The fun starts when you try to get into the parking lot. Six lines of cars inching their way up a steep hill to pay for parking is not my idea of fun. Especially if you are married to someone who always thinks the line next to you is moving faster, and cuts back and forth to save maybe thirty seconds of time.

I had envisioned Picture Day as described in the media literature: “A great opportunity for the whole family to take photos of their favorite players on the field.” My young son, the ultimate baseball fan, would actually get to meet his favorite players up close and personal, and snap a few photos for his baseball album. Not. Continue reading →