A Section of the Poem “Girls, Look Out for Todd Bernstein” by Jason Bredle
He’s seen your stuff for God’s sake, and it’s simply nothing more than mediocre, long prose poems with titles like “The Falling” and “Crucible” and “Waking to Death” that force impossible metaphors, despairing about love and womanhood and how bad your life is even though you grew up happily in suburban America, or at least as happily as anyone can grow up in suburban America, which normally, you know, consists of the appearance of happiness while your dad is doing three secretaries on the side and your mom pretends not to know and brags to the entire town about how you’re an actor about to star in a sitcom about the mis- adventures of a cable TV repairperson.
In this section of the poem “Girls, Look Out for Todd Bernstein” by Jason Bredle, it is discussed how a regular person growing up “happily in suburban America” has to appear happy while in reality things are hard. Many people can relate to hiding their emotions for one reason or another, sometimes for fear of upsetting someone or so they themselves don’t get their feelings hurt. The author describes how many people grow up “at least as happily as anyone can grow up / in suburban America, which normally, you know, / consists of the appearance of happiness while / your dad is doing three secretaries / on the side and your mom pretends not to know” (Bredle, 9-13). Here, others do not have the option to judge this person on her parental issues since the character pretends to be happy. This is the way some people deal with their problems so that they are not criticized by others, and while it prevents judgement, it does not resolve the problem of her parents. Additionally, there may be kind people who wouldn’t judge the character because of his or her parents, and the character would never get to find that quality in those people. There are reasons both for and against hiding faults and problems.
It is important to realize that people hide their problems and pretend to be happy because someone who does this can be criticized a lot. "'Whenever you feel like criticizing someone... just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had" because it may seem okay to criticize those without disadvantages, but the truth is these people likely have problems that they are hiding.