Search:The WebTripod

From Kara Berklich, Director of Communications:

Having read the above, you may well be asking, "What is a Director of Communications?" This position serves as an umbrella for a number of marketing tasks and roles -- and as a source of ribald amusement for my tech-oriented colleagues, who always seem to find my title funny in light of my natural gift of gab. Nevertheless, my communications skills have served me well at Tripod -- although they have been put to the test in the last three weeks of my life beyond work.

Let me communicate a little story to you. On Saturday, June 2, a Williamstown friend called in a panic. She and her husband were leaving for a three-week stay in England and decided at the last minute that they were uncomfortable leaving their beloved dog alone with their eighteen-year-old son. So, me being me, I accepted their desperate plea to stay in their house and care for the pooch. But I was also inevitably accepting some degree of responsibility for the eighteen-year-old. And, of course, that's where things began to get interesting.

Some of my friend's assurances that everything would be fine, that I only needed to serve as a loosely authoritative presence to which her son might conform, were immediately -- and forcefully -- proven wrong.

Assurance number one: "Don't worry, Kara, he won't have a party. He never does." Hey Mom, of course he doesn't when you're in town. But sure enough, late in the first week of his parents' absence, I had to take a quick Tripod trip to New York. Upon my return, I was promptly stopped by an angry neighbor. "Little problem here last night," the neighbor reported. "Kids tearing around, partying and blasting music 'til two a.m." This is an interesting predicament; until recently, I was the kid who threw the parties that went on too late.

Assurance number two: "He knows he's not allowed to drive the Jeep, but just to be sure, I've hidden the keys so he won't be able to drive it anyhow." Okay, but you put them in the first spot where I would look if you were my mother. And, of course, my young charge went right to them.

This led to the quality time I spent with the police after our friendly lad and his friends were caught tearing in and out of a parking lot and spraying gravel at the employees of -- where else -- Tripod. "But I didn't know it was Tripod," he explained. "I thought it was just some house where a bunch of college students lived. This guy kept chasing after us, so we just kept coming back to drive him nuts." Well, of course Anthony got all riled up about it -- these kids were being obnoxious. But you know, it sort of reminded me of the time the cops stopped me and a group of my friends for tearing around my hometown too fast, scaring the daylights out of recreational walkers -- including, of course, one of my mother's best friends. Only now, by playing the middle-(wo)man, I'm in my mother's shoes.

And what was my little delinquent's sarcastic response to all of my woes? "Just think -- you're developing your mommy skills. You'll thank me someday." Granted, I feel like I've taken some big steps into adulthood in the last few years. But realistically, I'm usually lucky if I can put gas in my own car, much less serve as surrogate parent to an eighteen-year-old. And yet, that is exactly how I've spent the first part of my summer -- playing mommy to a young man on the verge of his own adulthood, milking what he thinks are his last days of being a kid for all they're worth. Perhaps he's right...

But I still have a couple of problems with his wisecrack. First, I have no immediate plans to have children. Someday, certainly, but not soon. Secondly, I have no use for the lessons this experience taught until after I actually give birth and witness my own children rip into adolescence. By that point, my own kids will have driven me so nuts, I won't be able to recall the aforementioned events anyway.

What concerns me most is that I am obviously having a lot of trouble communicating the whole "authority thing" to this budding wild man. For me, being twenty-four is a time of walking the walk of an adult, taking on the grown-up responsibilities of bill-paying, car maintenance, and career objectives. Still, it often feels like there's a ten-year-old trapped inside this check-writing body. Maybe this boy is teaching me some good lessons after all -- even if I do forget them by the time I'm in my forties (or by the end of another long day as Tripod's mouthpiece).

We'll talk again,

Kara Berklich (6/28/96)

---

Read more "Letters from Tripod" in the archive.

---