The New Model

Today, I thought I would share the first passage that I want to refer to in my research project. I’m not sure how this is all going to work out, but this is the first passage that mentions the ‘new model’ in the novel. I understand that it might be difficult to compare this, but I think the next couple of passages that I share will help shed some light on what I’m trying to show.

In Dave Eggers’ memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, he shares how he deals with losing his mother and father to cancer. He is raising his younger brother without them. In this passage he is sitting with the other kid’s moms watching his younger brother playing baseball. He relates:

            I watch, and the mothers watch. I do not know how to interact with the mothers. Am I them? They occasionally try to include me in conversation, but it’s clear they don’t know what to make of me. I look over and smile when one of them makes a joke that is laughed at by all. They laugh, I chuckle—not too much, I don’t want to seem overeager, but enough to say “I hear you. I laugh with you. I share in the moment.” But when the chuckling is over I am still apart, something else, and no one is sure what I am. They don’t want o invest their time in the brother sent to pick up Toph [Christopher, his younger brother,] while his mother cooks dinner or is stuck at work or in traffic. To them I’m a temp. A cousin maybe. The young boyfriend of a divorcee? They don’t care.

            […]I don’t want to be friends with these women, anyway. Why would I care? I am not them. They are the old model and we are the new.

While it may seem weird to compare the loss of a mother and father to the growth of the new Internet, I hope I eventually accurately present what I’m thinking. Most importantly, we have to realize that these two large changes make those who are influenced by them change a lot of things. The old model of the family and the old model of life has to change. But at the same time, we cannot throw out all of the old rules (which I will talk more about in another post with another passage). We have to adapt rules to make them work.