Is this one of those things where everyone turns to the right?

When there are no ground rules for social conduct, who is responsible for the way things are? If there are no rules to break, how are disputes settled? I can’t believe what I am about to type–we could all learn a lot from the Gilmore Girls.

I’ve been rewatching the Gilmore Girls with my twelve-year-old daughter. Actually, she is rewatching. I am thrice watching the series. I watched it on my own about a decade ago and felt out of breath trying to listen as quickly as they spoke. I’ve been able to better appreciate the wit and kitschiness of it all, though I find myself siding most often with the matriarch, Emily Gilmore, this time around.

The girls (Loreli and her daughter, Rory) attend a town meeting in Ms. Patty’s dance barn once or twice a season. All our favorite characters are there, plus a couple dozen others who presumably live in Stars Hollow, but they don’t interact with the girls, so we don’t get to find out what they are about. The meetings are well attended. Taylor, who runs the show, is endlessly pitching ideas for improving the town one way or another and these ideas are always met with hesitation at best and at worst, ire. Ms. Patty makes lewd comments about younger men, and Babette nods in agreement. No mention is made of their toxic behavior. It’s accepted at the meeting as how older ladies behave. Kirk says things that are odd and irrelevant to the plot, but he’s lovable and always volunteering to help. Luke discourages divergence from the status quo, advocating for less at every occasion. He is the first to snap at Taylor for his idealism and Taylor holds his own. Presumably there is a treasurer and a secretary on the town council, but we don’t hear from them. The banter is between Taylor and the town. He is an uptight busybody, but he also gets stuff done. He takes charge of the fairy lights and pie contests. He’s always at the head of all the town gatherings that make Stars Hollow such a magical place to live. Taylor is the organizer, always fighting to hold onto tradition and build a strong tourist town. Taylor is the reason Stars Hollow is on the map at all. 

We need Taylors. And, we need Lukes. And what’s more, we need Taylor and Luke to have conversations where neither is bending too far for the other. If we get too caught up in the semantics, progress stalls. Do you ever stop to format text and by the time you figure out how to do it, you forget the point you were trying to make?^[1] Too much time spent on the presentation of the problem increases the chance we lose sight of a solution. Of course, this assumes all parties have the interest of Stars Hollow at heart.   

A couple months ago, I attended a school board meeting. I’m not sure why I went. I think I wanted to scout it out to see how things worked. I found that they don’t, really. Full disclosure, this is the first and last board meeting I’ve attended. Maybe this one was particularly quiet, but I don’t think so. So, I wonder what the point is? The majority of the meeting consisted of the HR department’s presentation of a national certification program for existing teachers. There was a thoughtful discussion with the board members asking questions and expressing concerns. The innovative and practical ideas expressed by the Board Chair were encouraging. She spoke passionately about using social media to incentivize teaching in a variety of professional pools and neighboring states, not just aspiring teachers in the area.

I was one of only a handful of people not on the board who attended the meeting, and the only one not presenting a three-minute plea for systemic change. I found myself craving the banter of a Stars Hollow town hall. When a woman, who introduced herself as a mom for liberty, used her three minutes to assert that the school system had failed to teach her three dyslexic sons to read AND that the same school system should remove books containing LGBTQ+ themes from the shelves. I wanted to embody my best Kirk and call out “what does it matter which books are on the shelf if your kid can’t read?” but, I stayed silent. It didn’t feel like that kind of meeting. Nor did any of the board members address her comments. The mom for liberty spoke unopposed.

I wish I had stood up and asked the mom for liberty how her complaint about the county’s reading curriculum was related to the request to remove books. I wish I had called her out and I can’t tell you why I didn’t. I guess I assumed everyone in the room saw her the way I did, like a toddler who yells “watch me!” before demanding we ban the books she thinks are icky. She’s just an annoyance we have to tolerate until they wear themselves out. But, of course, she was not a toddler; she was a grown woman spending her evening speaking in favor of restricting access to literary materials at a public school board meeting—in the name of liberty. I was there and I said nothing. I am numb to the insanity we are living in. I am a boiled frog. Wasn’t that proven to be a myth?

I think of how Stars Hollow would have received the mom for liberty in their town. Loreli would serve up a deluge of questions that reveal Ms. Liberty’s bigotry with a side of quirky charm. Luke would outright denounce her, and gruffly tell her to get out of town metaphorically and literally. Taylor would scoff at the very notion of banning any book in his town. And, Kirk would kick it all off, saying out loud what everyone’s thinking; open to the risk of hurting someone’s feelings in the interest of stating the problem clearly.

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^[1] I do.