Bossypants and The Og Story

So last week my wife and I wound up stuck in a room — well, in a series of rooms — with no way to leave and just one book between us. The obvious solution to this dilemma was to have one of us read aloud to the other.

The book we happened to have was Tina Fey’s Bossypants. It’s wickedly funny, sharp-eyed and engaging.

You know that right-wing slur about “humorless feminists”? Some of the funniest parts of Bossypants involve Fey making fun of the people who spread that stereotype. Her book is both very funny and very feminist, with those two things inextricably linked throughout.

Fey also has an eye and an ear for perfect, bullseye details, such as this bit, from her chapter on photoshoots. The photographer, she says, will sometimes:

… ask you if you want to hook up your iPod for background music. Do not do this. It’s a trap. They’ll put it on shuffle, and no matter how much Beastie Boys or Velvet Underground you have on there, the following four tracks will play in a row: “We’d Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover,” from Annie, “Hold On,” by Wilson Phillips, “That’s What Friends Are For,” Various Artists, and “We’d Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover,” from Annie.

Her selection of just-right telling details also shines through in the many parts of the book set in her native Delaware County, Pennsylvania. My wife grew up in Delco too, just a year ahead of Tina Fey, and I lived there for more than a decade. I’m fairly sure we’ve met the drunken Prendie girls from Chapter 5, and that we’ve both shopped at the Pathmark in Chapter 6.

That chapter — Tina Fey’s loving, warts-and-all portrait of her father — is recommended reading for any political scientist trying to understand the electoral dynamics of this swing state. If you’re wondering why working-class Delco remains a Republican stronghold, get to know Don Fey and to understand what his daughter describes as his “pre-Norman Lear racial attitudes.”

Which brings me to The Og Story.

This has nothing to do with Tina Fey’s book, except that Og — I have no idea how my friends’ dad acquired that nickname, or what it meant, but that’s what everyone called him — raised his daughters in Upper Darby, just a few blocks from where Don Fey was raising his. And if Tina Fey’s dad had “pre-Norman Lear” attitudes, my friends’ dad’s attitudes were pre-Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Og moved his family away from Upper Darby when the neighborhood began to “change,” as he put it. “You know,” he would say, and then he’d wave his hand across his face in a gesture that I guess was meant to suggest a dark complexion. (It took me a while to realize that’s what he was trying to express with this gesture, which was his way of not getting in trouble for saying the N-word. At first I thought he just meant, “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”)

Og pulled his kids out of Archbishop Prendergast and re-enrolled them in Archbishop Carroll, closer to their new home further west, out on the Main Line. It was a struggle for him, financially, but he was proud to be protecting his family from “those people” (Jedi hand-wave) and proud to be living in a more upscale area where, he was informed, his new next-door neighbor was going to be a doctor.

Funny thing is Og didn’t actually get to meet the doctor next door until after he’d closed on the new house and after he and his family had moved in. More to the point, he never saw the doctor next door until after the contracts were signed, the checks were cashed and the moving vans had pulled away.

So it wasn’t until the day after he moved that he learned his new neighbors were, well, you know (Jedi hand-wave).

The result of that surprise was that instead of spending his first week as a resident of the Main Line enjoying his new home, Og spent it in the hospital, being treated for panic attacks and anxiety.

God is not mocked, the scriptures say. But sometimes, I think, maybe God does a little mocking.

And but so anyway, where were we? Right, Bossypants.

Very funny book. Highly recommended. Particularly if you should ever find yourself stuck in a room (or a series of rooms) with your best friend and only one book between you to entertain yourselves.