The San Francisco based writer invites you to the masquerade

Back in the dark ages when I was a child, I wanted to be a fairy princess. I wanted to sprinkle everyone I met with fairy dust and create a golden paradise. As I grew older, I wanted to become a beautiful dancer, a brilliant student, a sugar plum.

Little boys had fiercer dreams. They wanted to be cowboys and bare-chested Indians with feathers trailing down their backs. They wanted to shoot guns, kick puppies and punch each other. That was what little boys were supposed to do.

Those were the days when we all believed our streets were paved with gold and hard work could earn you a rainbow. We believed love and marriage was a right. Every future needed lots of babies, a cute puppy and two cars in every garage. That was the American way.

Attitudes have certainly changed, haven’t they? These days, little girls want to be witches, vampires and black swans; little boys dream about pirates and fierce aliens. No one believes in miracles or magic. We want power, money and lots of bling.

“Galahads can’t pay the mortgage and maidens don’t want to be saved. It demeans them”

Little girls realise that to sprinkle themselves with fairy dust reduces them to sex objects. Little boys know that muscles only get them jealous looks at the gym. Healthy bank accounts, gas-guzzling cars and a hot tattoo are in. After all, Galahads can’t pay the mortgage and maidens don’t want to be saved. It demeans them.

When you visit America, what do you see? You see overweight human beings guzzling McDonald’s hamburgers and Kentucky Fried Chicken while they listen to music on their iPods, texting on their cell phones. You see huge shopping centres, clogged streets with no children playing on them. We put our children on school buses and worry that they will be kidnapped if they walk home from school. And no wonder. 2,185 children disappear every day in America.

Americans awake before dawn to drive on packed freeways for hours to a job that pays too little and demands too much. They battle traffic jams to get home too late to say good night to their children, turn on the TV with a beer in one hand and a remote in the other. There is no time to admire the daisy that bloomed in the garden or the pink dragon their child made in school. I see women dropping off their children at day care so they can go to an office, work until five, pick up the children, do the grocery shopping, clean the house and make dinner with no time to enjoy the money they have earned or get to know the children they have created. I see families buying gadgets they don’t need, wearing clothes that turn them into carbon copies of everyone else and I wonder if they know what they are missing.

There is a lot of good in the American way, of course. I love that women have choices and men do the dishes. I love that, in California at least, you can be gay or straight, black, white or yellow and still have a shot at grabbing the gold ring. I love that little girls play football and little boys are allowed to cry.

Not long ago, I was visiting a family in Edinburgh and when I opened the front door, their little girl was sitting in the hall singing to her dolls. The first thing that occurred to me as I watched that child so wrapped up in her fantasy she didn’t know anyone else existed, was “This could never happen in America.”

Just last month, I lost my way on a Brighton street and a woman I did not know walked me several blocks to my destination. If you are lost in my town, it is your bad luck. People here have deadlines. They don’t have time for compassion.

I wonder if California dreaming is fun anymore. We make headlines every day. You can’t beat us for glitter, but something awful has happened to the gold.

We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.
– Max Beerbohm

People are so busy dreaming the American dream, Fantasising about what they could be or have a right to be, That they’re all asleep at the switch. – Florence King

Be who you want to be with fancy dress
When I was a child I wanted be like the old woman who lived in a shoe… but then I realised that with all those children I’d need a good medical plan so I moved to Great Britain.

Halloween fun
It wasn’t just children that went Trick or Treating this year. One guy was so hot I asked him if he wanted a trick for a treat. He brought the wine.

Little girls want to be…
Grown up girls and lots of boys want to be Alice in Wonderland. Little girls know better: they all want to be Spiderwoman because she knows how to get what she wants. Little boys just like to get bigger.

Playing cops & robbers
I asked a lady from Texas if there was a lot of road rage there. She said, “Honey, in Texas we don’t have road rage. We shoot ’em.” That is why their children don’t play cops and robbers. It’s not a game in Texas. It is a way of life.

See more of Lynn Ruth Miller on Brighton Lights at www.thelatest.tv