Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs Part 28

I look after myself. You understand what I'm saying? I own a home. I own three cars. To be honest with you, my mother left me a little money. I have like a hundred thousand dollars stashed-like fifty grand of that my mother left me. I had to pay two percent inheritance tax. The rest is earnings and investments. I'm not really vouching for nothing, but I have money stashed. I do this now just to be doing something. You know, you have something in your blood and you've done it so long-I'm not hurting for anything. I have a one hundred and fifty thousand dollar home in Queens. So you know I'm okay.

You have a lot of prost.i.tutes that don't do all right because they have pimps, they use drugs, they live in the street, they do certain things. I did drugs-I'm not gonna lie to you. I've done things, I've been through it all. I've never shot nothing. But I've sniffed, I've smoked crack, I've been around-you know what I'm saying? There's not much in this life I haven't experienced yet.

But, one thing, I respect old people and I respect children. You know, because I feel children are the future, and old people are still here and they have to be wise to still be here. And as a transvest.i.te, I don't believe in people hurting women, either. I've actually rolled guys for beating up women. Men can overpower women naturally. Transvest.i.tes live in both worlds, so we know what goes on. We are sympathetic. We know what it's like to be the victim. But most of us are pretty clever. You find a few things have happened to us, bad things, but most of us can hold our own weight.

You don't find that much killing. You find more killing with girl prost.i.tutes. Most transvest.i.tes will fight back and most guys that pick up transvest.i.tes know that. If you're on the streets for a while, you'll run into certain things. You'll toughen up. Certain things will happen to you no matter what, and that can only make you a stronger person. When you're gay, you've spent most of your life fighting. Most of us have weapons. I carry a knife-a box cutter-and I keep Mace. But I wouldn't use it to rob somebody. I wouldn't use it to hurt you, but if you try to hurt me, I'm gonna try to hurt you.

I have some johns who've become friends. Not many. As far as being friends, once you've met someone and they become a john- well, you know, they always say, "Don't mix business with pleasure." When I hang, I hang out with my other transvest.i.te girlfriends. They are my real friends. You don't never mix business with pleasure, because then you're off. You understand what I'm trying to say to you? When you meet one way-it ends that way. The way things start, that's the way they end.

I don't believe in boyfriends and love and that. I mean, I believe that two people can love each other. But when you sell yourself for s.e.x, no one can really love you. This is how I feel. I could never see myself being with someone like that. I have enough s.e.x doing the work that I do. I take vacations sometimes for like, six months sometimes in the winter, and I don't wanna be bothered with a man. You might see twenty men during the night, so why should you be bothered? You go to the beauty parlor, you do this, you do that, you don't wanna be bothered by that s.h.i.t. Then you don't have no headaches. You don't love n.o.body, n.o.body loves you, and that's the way that it is.

I don't know how much longer I'll be out here. I have money put away. I also worked for four years, so I can draw Social Security when I'm sixty-two. I made a trust fund for myself, so I figure between all these things, I can live off the interest. I'll probably have another fifty grand by the time I quit. So basically, unless my house burns down, I'll be all right. It's not a lot, but I'm all right. A lot of people don't make it this far. Some prost.i.tutes get killed in a year. They get diseases. I've been lucky.

Look, I can't stay here much longer talking to you, because I think the f.u.c.king police are down there, but anytime you wanna ask me something, you can come back. I don't usually take this long. Usually with a john it's like boom, boom, boom, boom. You know what I'm saying? I have to go. But another time, you come back, and I'll spend a while with you. We can stop by my house-something like that. We can drive there at the end of the night. And then we can really sit down and talk. And it'll be on me. But I really have to go. Now you know a little something about me. We'll meet again. I'm here just about every night.

There's a woman, flat on her back,

with all these tubes coming out of her,

and she can't just do what her body

wants to do.

LABOR-SUPPORT DOULA.

Judith Halek.

My work is one of the highest, most honorable works that one could do on the planet-a.s.sisting people to have babies. A labor-support doula is a woman helper, a woman a.s.sistant. It's a Greek word. I don't have a medical degree-I have a wealth of knowledge and experience about women's bodies and about how labor actually happens, how childbirth really works. And I help women to have their babies with a minimum amount of medical intervention-which is what's best for both the mother and child.

Eleven years ago, I was a ma.s.sage therapist, and a friend asked me to attend her birth at home, with her midwife and her husband and a few other people who were going to be there. It was going to be a water birth, you know, in their loft. And she asked me if I would ma.s.sage her and feed her and take care of her. And I said, "Well, I don't really know what to do, but I'll do the best that I can."

So we went into labor, and it was a long and arduous labor, and the midwife was doing herbs, and doing lots of walking with the mom, but it really was a process for everybody. We were all virgins, so to speak, in our experience. I remember the football game was on. [Laughs] During the early labor, the dad was watching the football game. [Laughs] And at one point, the mother was going through some pretty intense contractions and she screamed, "Turn off that f.u.c.king football game! I'm having a baby!" And then she said, "I want everyone to talk quietly! You're all talking too loud!" [Laughs] So we all had to be quiet and whisper and put all our attention on the mother and the baby. Which, basically, I was doing already and understood to be important and all that, but still, it was new to me. And it was very exciting.

What ended up happening was they had a very large copper b.u.t.ter urn, which they'd gotten somehow from Wisconsin. It was eight feet wide and four and a half feet deep. And we filled it up with water and the midwife put on a swimsuit and got in with the mother. Then I got into the urn too. I was ma.s.saging my friend as we kind of floated around. I had underwear on and a T-shirt and the husband was in there later, during the pushing. So we had a little train going. The husband, me, the mother, and then the midwife was in the front, between her legs. I was ma.s.saging my friend's shoulders, her back, her arms and legs-they were all going into spasms. Then, suddenly, it was time for her to push and I was able to literally feel her push against my pelvis as she pushed this baby out. And I got to see over her shoulders. It was almost as if my body had birthed the baby.

That was a real initiation for me. I blew my fuse, so to speak. I'll never forget it. This baby came out and everybody just went, "Wow!" And then he was doing a little bit of crying and baby sounds and the mother started singing this song. She sang, "I love my baby, yes I do. I love my baby. I love my baby. I love you so. I love my baby." [Starts crying] And the baby got very quiet, opened his eyes, looked at his mother and just stared at her. She kept singing and he felt the vibration of her body and her voice. It was so amazing. I've sung that song every time I've held a crying baby ever since. It's so beautiful, I think.

Seeing that baby come out, and getting to see it in its mother's arms and feel it, it was a miraculous experience. I was completely amazed, awestruck. Extremely emotional and-honored. I believe that everyone should witness a childbirth. Particularly every man. Because, and I really believe this, if every single man saw someone that they loved or cared for give birth, there would be less violence in this world. Men would not pick up a gun so readily. Because I've seen the transformation in the men over and over and over again. They see what happens and they find a new respect for their wives, their girlfriends, their lovers, knowing that they would never be able to do that. [Laughs] And they're just amazed that the woman can and does do it. How strong the women are. How sacred it is, to catch that baby and cut the cord. That kind of stuff. [Sobs] Good thing we're not on TV. [Crying] I must say that I cry at every birth.

Oh, my G.o.d. [Laughs] This is getting emotional. [Laughs] I-so I, that first birth, that was eleven years ago. I was thirty-two years old. It was the most pivotal moment of my life. It marked the beginning of my work. Up until then, I was doing a lot with AIDS and cancer patients-ma.s.sage therapy and a little bit of hypnosis. And all my work was going in the direction of death, of potential death. Because when you're dealing with those kind of patients, the greater percentage pa.s.s on sooner than later. And suddenly I was, like, I felt had a choice before me: I could stay with this death process or I could do this new thing, babies-and, you know, the life process. And I chose the life process.

I started investigating, going to the library, collecting article after article. I went on the radio a little bit and connected with a woman on the West Coast called Barbara Harper, who back then had an organization called International Water Birth. And then I started just volunteering my time as a labor doula to see if I really wanted to do this work. I went to a couple of hospitals and a couple of birth centers with friends, and friends of friends, and realized that I was really pretty good and I decided I'd do this and make a business out of it. So I got a bunch of certifications in preand postnatal ma.s.sage and postnatal fitness and childbirth education. And I started writing articles and teaching cla.s.ses and getting paying clients and everything just overlapped. It was wonderful. I believe that when you're on your path, your right path, the opportunities, the connections, the people come to you.

As a doula, my job is to a.s.sist mothers in their births in hospitals, at home, and in birth centers. Sometimes there's an obstetrician present, sometimes a midwife, sometimes it's just me and the parents. I am employed by the parents, never by the hospital or anyone else. Essentially, I am the liaison between the medical caregivers and the parents, particularly the mother. I'm with her through every contraction. I hold her hand, get her food. Afterwards, I help out at home. I help the family settle into life with a new baby. I set things up and unpack things. I'll give some advice about breastfeeding, or I'll make tea, do ma.s.sage, whatever is needed.

And throughout the birth process, when there are medical questions, the mother and father listen to the medical caregiver, then they talk to me and then they make the final decision. I give them options.

Women in this country have stopped trusting their bodies. As a result, birth has become way too mechanized here. So many women today-the vast majority-have something called an epidural at the onset of their labor pains, which is you shoot some sort of numbing anesthesia into the epidermis of the spinal column and you numb the woman from the waist down, so she can open cervically and not feel pain and therefore she can rest if she's really tired. But what happens is-once a woman is numb like that, she can't use her body as well anymore to push. So pretty soon, they're giving her drugs to increase her contractions and get the baby out. Well, she would have been able to do that herself if it hadn't been for the epidural. And many times, one intervention leads to another and then to another and soon they are cutting at the woman to get the baby out faster, to deliver by forceps, or vacuum extraction, or Cesarean section.

With all these interventions, we end up having a lot more potential complications on low-risk pregnancies. Because now what we've got is-there's a woman, flat on her back, with all these tubes coming out of her, and she can't just do what her body wants to do and was ready to do. If you read the medical journals, the statistics on home births as opposed to a hospital birth, as far as medical interventions and mother and infant mortalities-the rates are much lower at home than in a hospital.

By putting a woman in a tub of water or a shower, or just letting her walk around, getting her off her back, you allow her to cope much more readily with the pain of childbirth. She's able to secrete her own hormones, her own endorphins, her own opiates. She's able to have her baby better and more safely. And, ironically, usually with much less pain, because all these interventions, if they lead to a Cesarean-that's major abdominal surgery that takes months to recover from. I often have women say to me, "Well, I really don't want to experience the pain of childbirth. I'd rather risk the Cesarean." And I say, "You would rather go through major surgery and two to four weeks of extreme pain afterwards to avoid six to twenty-four hours of pain now?" It doesn't make sense.

All of these medical interventions are very brilliant in their own right, and are to be made usage of in emergencies. But what's happening is that they're being used as routine and babies are suffering and women's bodies are being mutilated. So I try to guide women into making the decision not to just have a reaction to three contractions and say, "I've got to have an epidural." Instead, I'll say, "Come on, let's get a grip here. Why don't you get out of the bed and get away from that machine and let's start walking and let's start moving and let's start breathing." Things like that. And, in the end, the women cope much better, and our children don't start out in a drugged state. Because, remember-when the mother is in a drugged state, the baby is in a drugged state because everything pa.s.ses through the placenta.

Sometimes I feel incredibly traumatized in hospitals. By what they try to do to the mothers and by what they do to the babies afterwards. In one instance, there was a baby that had six pediatricians that came in that kept poking and prodding and sticking and smacking the baby for forty-five minutes. After twenty minutes, I said to one of the pediatricians, "Why are you doing this?" Because the mother was asking and I was the liaison. They said, "The baby's okay, but this is a teaching hospital." Which means that they were using this baby to do a demonstration for medical students. So I looked at the parents and I said, "You do not have to partic.i.p.ate in this-it's your baby. You can tell them to stop now." And they didn't. Because people are so overawed by doctors, you know.

These pediatricians and these students, they were holding the baby in different positions to test the reflexes and to get the heart rate and to get the color in the baby to keep coming back. It was really messed up. After about thirty-five minutes, I started crying. I said, "I'm sorry, but I cannot stay in the room any longer. If you choose to let them do this when they don't need to, I have to leave." So I went into the hallway and it was like two o'clock in the morning and there wasn't a whole lot going on on the floor and I cried and sobbed and sobbed and you could hear me all the way down the hallway. n.o.body came to me. There were two nurses sitting in one of the two labor rooms watching TV. They saw me out of the corner of their eyes and n.o.body came to me and I just sat there and cried and cried for five, ten minutes. Then I got up, gathered myself, washed myself and went back in, and took the baby from the pediatricians. They were finished and I held the baby in my hand. Tears were coming out, I was so tired and so p.i.s.sed off. And the baby said to me, "I am more than all of this. I am more than all of the pain."

I handed the baby to the mother and the father and I said, "You need to, in a couple of days, send energy to the baby's feet, because they took needles and they p.r.i.c.ked the feet and they did things on the back. Ma.s.sage the feet, send energy into the legs, because this baby has been traumatized for the first forty-five minutes of its life, it's been traumatized. This is the way you can help realign the energy field of the body." And by the baby giving me that information and me being able to pa.s.s onto the mother and father that insight, I settled them down and I left.

That was a very bad experience. One of my worst. But I've had many, many good experiences. Many more good than bad. I've worked with over four hundred couples in my career. Most with the absolute minimum of medical intervention.

I still keep up with many of them-at least as best I can. I have a newsletter that I send out annually. Of course, everyone wants me to go to birthday parties, which I do attend sometimes. But I wouldn't have a life if all I did was go to birthday parties. [Laughs] I don't have much of a life anyway. [Laughs] At least not a social life. I'm at the beck and call of my clients all the time. Living on a beeper, you don't have a life. There have been mornings, at four o'clock in the morning, I'll get beeped and I go to the hospital or wherever and I cancel everything the next day.

It's a huge amount of work-because of the nature of what it is. I mean, an obstetrician can schedule a Cesarean around their vacation, because it's an operation. It has nothing to do with the natural cycle of pregnancy. But I do things naturally, so I can't schedule anything. So my life is chaos.

But it's incredibly rewarding. I think it's the most rewarding thing you can possibly do. And it's-my personality is, you know, I was meant to do this. I am a nurturer. I am a comforter. It's organic. It's me. I don't have any children of my own. I went through a real mourning process between thirty-seven and forty, where it was very difficult for me, after I finished teaching a cla.s.s, or after I left a birth, for me to process the fact that I probably wouldn't have a child. But then I realized that it's sort of like, my work is so full and so rich, it's my vision. It's myself. My whole being. And I have accepted what I resisted for those three years. Now, at forty-three, I am at peace with myself. I will not settle for a relationship because I am lonely, or a baby because I am getting older. Those are not the reasons to be in a relationship or have a baby. Because in the long run, it depletes your soul. So I am at peace. My work will be my child. The babies and the mothers I have helped, and my articles, and my teaching that I do- those will be my children.

Woof-woof? Yes, woof-woof.

Clap hands! Woof-woof!

MOTHER.

Elise Klein.

My husband and I had only been married for a few months when I got pregnant. Having reached the ripe old age of thirty-four, I thought it maybe would be difficult to conceive. And we both wanted to have kids, so we started trying right away, and I got pregnant right away. [Laughs] We were shocked. It was a bit of a disappointment, actually. Because we had just moved to New York and this place is hard enough without kids, and then add one and then two children to the mix-that's not that much fun at all. It would have been nice to have been married and just to have had the two of us here for a while. We could have enjoyed living in the city for a while. [Laughs] We could have enjoyed each other. We'd dated for three years so it's not like we didn't have time together alone, but still.

Also, I was a freelance graphic designer, and when we moved here, it was for Cliff's, my husband's, job. So I was kind of forced to restart a lot of stuff professionally-make new contacts and all that. And I was still very much in transition with those things when my son Milo was born. I was planning on staying home with him and working out of our apartment-which in hindsight was a naive plan- but nonetheless, it was what I'd hoped to do. I never got it going, though. Never came close. It was just too hard to take care of this new baby and do all this extra work to relaunch my career in a new city, so I just kind of let the career slide.

That all seems like a long time ago. [Laughs] I'm a mom now. I have Milo, who's almost three years old, and my daughter, Olivia. She's ten months. She was an accident, but a happy one, I think, because we'd always planned to have two and, well, because she's Olivia. She's a sweetie. But it's been tough. When we just had Milo, I thought I was pretty overwhelmed, but now, with both, it's kind of beyond that. I take care of them full-time. I don't get any help because we just can't afford it. We're like completely maxed out financially. So it's just me and the kids at home. I think it's the hardest job I've ever had. In fact, it's hard to even say where the job starts. It's just all-consuming. It never stops.

Milo gets up between five and six in the morning. Mercifully, Cliff gets up with him and plays with him for a little while before he goes to work. [Laughs] They actually sleep together in our bed. That's one of the more unusual things [laughs] about our household. Cliff has kind of been in charge of Milo's sleeping and waking since a few months before Olivia was born. He puts Milo to bed at night. He gives him his bath. He started doing that when I was really pregnant and I couldn't even lean over the bathtub. Then they started sleeping together because Milo started having nightmares just before I gave birth. He'd get up in the middle of the night and Cliff would go get him and bring him into our bed. I ended up on the couch after Olivia was born because we didn't want her to wake him up and vice versa, so we'd get as far apart in the apartment as we could, and I'm afraid those sleeping arrangements have sort of stuck. Cliff sleeps with Milo and I sleep with Olivia.

I don't sleep well-never more than a few hours straight-because Olivia nurses on and off all night. Breast-feeding with Milo didn't go so well. He just wouldn't take my breast and it was a real problem. I was determined to make it work with Olivia because I believe in it for a lot of reasons. I believe it makes kids healthier and more emotionally secure and all that-but I never imagined it would come to the point where Olivia was literally attached to my body all night long. She wakes me repeatedly while I'm sleeping so she can get herself reattached. I'm just a big pacifier. I don't feel like I can say no to her, because the few times I've tried that she's screamed so long and loud, she's woken up Milo, living in this d.a.m.n shoe box that we do.

So, anyway, that's nighttime. In the morning, Cliff gets up with Milo, and I stay asleep with Olivia for maybe half an hour. It doesn't last long because Milo is insanely jealous of the fact that not only do I pay more attention to Olivia with breast-feeding and all that, but she gets to spend the entire night with me as well. He's certain he's missing out on something, so pretty much as soon as Cliff turns his back, Milo bolts in here and literally just grabs me or throws things at me or pulls at me. And he wants his sister to wake up as well. He just wants to party all day long. He wants everybody up and moving about.

Cliff's out the door for work by seven-thirty. And, generally, when he goes, I haven't had a shower yet, or eaten, or anything like that. It takes me, G.o.d, sometimes another three hours to get everything together-feed and clothe Milo and Olivia and clean up and whatnot, try to clean up.

There's a ton of cleaning. It's actually very, very important to keep the place clean. The main reason is for hygiene and safety, obviously. I mean, I can't have Olivia finding like a week-old bottle under the couch and drinking it-not that that hasn't happened, but I try not to have it happen too often. Or, like, swallowing one of Milo's little toys, some of them are pretty small and she could easily choke on them. [Laughs] And that definitely can't happen. But you also clean for sanity. Just to make a dent in all this mess. Just so you're not like drowning in kid toys and, like, smeared food. Dirty laundry, dirty dishes. There's so much. You can never get it all up, but it's like a compulsion.

Every morning, I just clean and clean and clean. And I try to eat some breakfast myself and get the d.a.m.n diaper bag together. I do all this during Blues Clues and Teletubbies. G.o.d bless Teletubbies! I get a lot done in that half hour. [Laughs] I don't care what anyone ever said about them, they're lovely. Even that big purple, f.a.ggoty one. [Laughs] He's gay as the day is long and I love him.

By around ten o'clock, we head out to the park. I have to get out of the house. That's part of the problem of living in this city. We live in what is a pretty normal-size apartment by New York standards, but it's incredibly small by anyone else's standards. There is literally not enough room for a kid-Milo starts tearing at the walls after a few hours. So we have to get out.

But getting out is not easy. We live in a third-floor walk-up and I have a double stroller which weighs probably thirty pounds. And I have a particularly big boy. [Laughs] He's thirty-plus pounds himself. So I go down the stairs in two shifts. I close the kids in the apartment, carry down the stroller and bags of toys and bottles and all this nonsense to the main hallway of our building, then I go back upstairs and get the kids and bring them down. [Laughs] Then I'm off. Pushing this stroller down the street, I feel like a pack animal. [Laughs]

Once we actually reach the playground, things are pretty okay. Milo has an independent little spirit. He likes to play by himself and he doesn't need me hovering over him. And Olivia, well, she can't walk yet, thank G.o.d, so I can pretty much plop her down in the sandbox or wherever and talk with some other moms and she doesn't get into too much trouble. I love talking to the other moms-that's a lifesaver. I get commiseration. [Laughs] But it doesn't last long. By one in the afternoon, we need to be home for lunch and nap time.

Milo's on this liquid diet lately. He just drinks milk with Ovaltine in it. When he was sick a couple of months ago, we started giving it to him because he wasn't eating anything and we thought it would give him more nutrients. But now he's totally addicted to the stuff and some days, it's pretty much all he has for lunch. Cliff will actually kind of force him to eat other things at dinner, but I'm not into that. I figure they'll eat eventually-everyone does-and I really don't want any conflicts. I want a smooth transition from lunch to nap time.

Napping is, like, incredibly important to me. They'll nap at the same time if I really work at it. A lot of days, I have to struggle to keep Olivia awake until Milo goes down, and she gets really fussy and it's unpleasant-but it's definitely worth it because if they both nap at once, I get an hour or so to myself. That's the only time all day I can get anything done. So I'll pay our bills, or read, or just veg. Sometimes I lie down next to Olivia and pa.s.s out myself. It's the best part of the day.

After nap time, it's back to work. Ready or not! [Laughs] If they wake up early enough, we'll go to the park again. If not, we'll just play inside till dinner, which means, you know, they tear the apartment apart and throw toys everywhere and I think about cleaning them up. The TV is on way more often than I care to admit. It's the best baby-sitter and free. [Laughs] But I try, if possible, to get back to the park. It just seems more sane.

Dinner is complex. I don't want to have to feed the kids myself, so I try to keep them up till Cliff gets back, which makes the meal easier, but it also means that Cliff and I hardly have any time for ourselves. Often the kids are not both in bed and asleep until ten o'clock.

And that's it. That's my day, every day. It's an exhausting, almost debilitating routine. And it affects every part of me-my body, my spirit. I feel ten years older than I did when I started three years ago. I look it, too. And it's totally warped my relationship with my husband. We're like roommate caretakers. Zookeepers. We don't have much of a relationship between ourselves anymore. I'm probably telling more than I should. [Laughs]

Someone called me a housewife recently and it was really shocking. It upset me for a couple of days. I hadn't really thought about it. But I guess I am-actually, that's why it was upsetting. I had to acknowledge that I'm one. You know? And then you have to ask yourself, why is it that the most perhaps worthy and necessary and admirable profession there is-you can argue there is nothing more important in a way really-but, umm, why doesn't it command respect? Why do I not even feel good about it a lot of the time? I really don't know.

I think traditionally, people lived in extended families, so children were raised sort of communally. Or even, in many cultures, children were just raised by their grandparents. That was the role that they played. And the parents were younger and stronger and they were the ones who went out and did the work. I think, I would go so far as to say-and here I am on my soap box and I've said this a lot of times-I would go so far as to say that some of the biggest reasons why there is something wrong-to be grand-with the very fabric of society today has to do with the fact that the nuclear family isn't a viable unit. The two-parent or one-parent family doesn't work, you need more support than that. And day care and baby-sitters maybe make a difference, but they don't take the place of a couple of grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles who you don't have to pay to love your children.

Unfortunately, my husband's family lives about a thousand miles away and although they're perfectly nice and willing to help, we see them maybe three times a year. My family is closer, but my sisters are both busy with their own kids, my dad has pa.s.sed on, and my mother is a really depressed and depressing person. She doesn't have very much energy and never did. I don't have any energy now either [laughs] but she has a chronic illness. So we're kind of on our own. Or, rather, I'm on my own. Cliff's gone all day in the office. He's working hard, I know, but as far as I'm concerned, he's lucky. He's with adults all day.

I really miss having even a little bit of an adult life apart from my children. There are long stretches of every day where I don't even really speak, except in this baby talk, you know, with these idiotic, high-pitched words. "What does doggy say? Woof-woof? Yes, woofwoof. Clap hands! Woof-woof!" And on and on. It's depressing. I know that they're just really young right now and I won't have them physically attached to my body forever and not even for very much longer, but for the time being, it's really hard. I feel deprived and I'm ashamed of myself for feeling that way, but that's how it is.

Obviously I love my children. Sometimes, it's not obvious. [Laughs] But I do. I don't regret doing this at all. I had a career and I gave it up to stay at home with my kids because I thought that was important-and even if I never get that career back, I still think it was worth it. It's that important. I see kids in the playground every day who're being raised by these nannies who are just so awful to them. They ignore them to talk to their nanny friends, and when they're not ignoring them, they're just being mean to them-giving very negative attention, yelling sometimes, grabbing-never hugging or being gentle or sweet. It's incredible. And the kids, it really shows. They seem depressed. They're often very quiet, sullen. And some of them, you know, I see them on weekends back in the park with their parents and they're just monsters. They're so angry, I think, because they've been abandoned all week. My kids aren't always angels, you know, but they're happy. They're loud and lively and happy. And that's because they're around somebody who loves them all day. [Laughs] Even if that somebody is kind of worn out. So I really don't regret it. But that said, even so, it's a lot harder than I ever imagined.

I just hope, you know, fifteen years from now, everybody's happy. Healthy, too, but happy's what I worry about. I have kind of a dread fear of teenagers. I can get upset just thinking of Milo at like sixteen just hating me, not talking to me, and me all bereft about what I sacrificed-all the work, no career, this weird life. That happens a lot, of course. It happened in my family. I don't think there's much you can do about it, though, except try to keep going, you know, being a good parent. Which means making sacrifices. As they get older, it seems like they maybe need you less, or want you less. Your responsibilities diminish somewhat, I guess. But they don't ever go away, I don't think. I mean, I can't imagine. I'm thirty-eight and I still cry to my mom sometimes, despite myself. I still need her, you know? It's a lifetime job.

Hula hoops. Power Rangers. Star Wars.

TOYS "R" US MARKETING EXECUTIVE.

Michael Tabakin.

I'm the director of licensing and sales promotions for Toys "R" Us. If you break it down, my job is to look for entertainment properties like Teletubbies or the X-Men or whatever new thing is coming up that we can take advantage of to try and drive sales into our stores.

I have to evaluate everything that's out there in the marketplace that kids might be buying next year or the year after. Everything from everybody. Sesame Street, Barney, every film-all the content that companies like Disney and Warner Brothers and all the different studios are delivering, either in TV or in film. Every publishing property. Everything. And anything I can find that I think might have a big impact in the market, I try to license it-before my compet.i.tion does. Basically, so we can develop product around it that no one else has, so that the only place you can find toys based on these properties is at Toys "R" Us.

You have to separate yourself from other people in the marketplace. Because if you're offering the same goods and services as everybody else there's no reason to come into your particular store. You look at Kmart with Martha Stewart. You look at Target with Discovery Channel.

It's called "branding." That's the buzzword in today's environment.

A brand is something that people recognize, it's-a brand is something that people don't even have to say anything about. It has been so well established in the marketplace that people instantly recognize it.

A brand is not a fad. There's a big difference between a fad and a brand. A fad can last for two or three or four years. You don't even start thinking something might be a brand until it's been in the market five or six years. And then, a brand could be around forever- thirty, forty, fifty years, who knows. It's not something that comes in like bell-bottoms and goes away and comes back again. It's something that once it's in, it stays in. Something that people generally have bought into and will continue to buy into and never let go. And that's the power of a brand-it just has such staying power.

Barbie. Hot Wheels. Lego. Those are brands. Sesame Street is a brand. Barney is a brand. Barney's about ten or twelve years old. Once you go past four or five years you've sort of become a brand already. You've pa.s.sed the fad stage. You're not going away. Hula hoops. Power Rangers. Star Wars. They don't go away. They just don't. They're used by kids, and as the kids get older and new kids are born every day, and they get introduced to these things, they love 'em all over again and they continue to use 'em and they become brands. You know?

Some of the brands that we have at Toys "R" Us are-well, we're going to be aligning ourselves with Animal Planet. We'll be aligning ourselves with Major League Baseball. We align ourselves with the Women's Soccer Victory Tour. We're running with the Power Rangers Tour. We have a lot of kid-friendly things that we align ourselves with.

The key is finding the properties that people don't know-the hidden jewels, if you will, that will become brands. That's what will separate you from your compet.i.tion. Pokemon-which came out of nowhere, and now it's the hottest thing going out there. It's probably doing-it's going to do one hundred, maybe two hundred million dollars worth of business this year. It came out of j.a.pan. Okay? And it's sleepers like that-those are the ones that really can produce a lot of impact in the marketplace. That's what I'm trying desperately to find.

I look wherever I can. And if that means looking at entertainment vehicles that are going to be available in two years-well, I'm looking at 'em right now to see whether we want to be proactive and get out in front of them. That's what I gotta do. I have to stay ahead of everybody else.

I'm constantly on the road, traveling around to different companies like Disney and Warner Brothers, trying to find out what's going on. Taking a look at films. Taking a look at what people are going to be marketing next year or the year after. The people I deal with on a daily basis are the marketing, advertising, and consumer product divisions of each one of the studios. They do for their properties what I do for my company. [Laughs] They try to enhance their properties by getting it in my stores, and I try to enhance their properties by getting it in my stores. And I know their side of the business very well because that's what I used to do. Before I came to Toys "R" Us, I was a vice president of licensing for Turner Home Entertainment. I did that for five years. So it's sort of a-we're all on the same page. We're all trying to do the same thing: get these properties into kids' hands.

Unfortunately, with the side I'm on now-retail-in most cases you don't have the luxury of waiting to see what kids think about a particular property. Because by the time they've gotten hot, you either have it in your store or you don't. Because the product development lag time is about a year. So you don't have the luxury of doing focus groups. You basically-you have a variety of variables that you look at. I mean, does something have a chance of being a brand? Where is it going to be telecast? What stations? How long is it going to be there? Who are the strategic partners? When does it air? I mean, there are a gazillion questions that I ask myself as I evaluate properties.

But at the end of the day it's very difficult. And it's not like-you don't have a gut feeling. You're not going on your gut. [Laughs] At least I'm not. I mean, if you could basically-if I could tell you what the next hottest thing was, I would buy stock in that property and that would be the end of it. I'd be retired. [Laughs] I mean that totally wholeheartedly. I really do. It is a very nebulous thing about why kids like one thing over another thing.

And I can't-I certainly can't figure it out. I try to. And I try to point our company in the right direction of the things that I think are- have a chance of becoming hot. But I don't-I mean, I don't think anybody really knows for a fact. It's like picking a stock. What stock do you think is going to do the best? Now, why do you believe that? You can say, "Here are all the things I think why." But you don't know.

Obviously, it's less risky to work with established brands, cla.s.sic characters-say for example, Mickey Mouse-and work with studios that have a lot of marketing dollars behind those characters. But less risk usually means less reward. If you think about the last ten properties that probably came in and were hot-really, really, really hot- they weren't from the big studios.

Again, I don't know why. It's just what is. If you look at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, if you look at Pokemon or Teletubbies, if you look at Power Rangers-they didn't come from the larger studios. I mean, I'm not saying all of them. I'm not saying Batman or Jura.s.sic Park or some of the others weren't hot-I'm not discounting the fact that some of the larger studios come up with some seriously good content. I'm just saying that some of the brands that have been in the marketplace over the last ten years did not come from the bigger studios. Why? I don't know. I don't know!

It could be a variety of things. It's not cool because parents like it. Kids don't-kids like it because parents hate it. Kids found it, parents didn't find it. No one was marketing it. They just-it was sort of a gra.s.sroots thing that kids thought it was cool first before anybody- any marketing old fogey like me got their hands on it. It could be anything and I can't-again, what stock are you picking? And why? You a.s.sume you're making an intelligent decision based on as much information as you can gather, but there is no right answer until you see how kids responded to something. It's an after-the-fact scenario to see how it netted out.

Hopefully, we come up with something that can capture a kid's imagination and basically have the kid engrossed in fun and learning and happy. If we do that, I think it's a great toy. It could be as simple as blowing bubbles and it could be as complicated as computer software. You know, either one is fine as long as the kid's having fun and enjoys it and it's not-and it doesn't hurt 'em.

You've just got to make the kid happy. And it's in a sense almost-it's a simple equation. Will a kid like my toy? Will he like- will a kid like this toy that I'm offering out? Because, the way the marketing effort works is, it's the adults basically controlling the marketing of these properties and looking at, you know, creating fiftymillion-dollar movies and a hundred-million-dollar movies and a hundred-fifty-million-dollar marketing campaigns. It's adults that are doing this. Not kids. But hopefully, it's with the end result being that kids will be the recipients of all of this hard work and the uniqueness of the films and the toys and everything else that goes along with it.