Emma Straub on Boy Bands And the Joy of Middle Age

Doree Shafrir (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.

Elise Hu (0:17)

And I'm Elise Hu, and we're just two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.

Doree Shafrir (0:21)

And today, we have the one and only Emma Straub, author, bookstore owner, just delightful human, return Forever35 guest. Although, I was like, oh yeah, we had her on a couple years ago, cut to, oh, that was 2020

Not a couple years ago.

Elise Hu (0:43)

Not a couple years.

Doree Shafrir (0:44)

What is time, Elise?

Elise Hu (0:47)

I feel like we had a similar experience with Mary HK. Choi.

Doree Shafrir (0:50)

Yes.

Elise Hu (0:51)

The last time she was on was like 2018

Doree Shafrir (0:54)

Oh my god. Time just has flattened.

Elise Hu (0:59)

Yes. And Emma was the perfect person to talk about that, because her previous book is about time travel. There's a time travel storyline, This Time Tomorrow, and it's really lovely. And so we talked a little bit about how like in middle age, time both moves fast and very slow. So it's like that elasticity. Physics, it's weird.

Totally, or time, it's weird.

Doree Shafrir (1:25)

Yes. Yes. I mean, I think also when you have kids, time moves in a different way because I was like, oh, 2020, like Henry was one.

Elise Hu (1:36)

Right. Right. Yeah. That is very different. Because they're experiencing such leaps and bounds in their changes.

Doree Shafrir (1:41)

Yeah, exactly.

Elise Hu (1:42)

Whereas from when I was 20 to when I was like 29, before I had Ava, I don't know, it's all one blur. It all feels like generally the same.

Doree Shafrir (1:52)

100%.

Elise Hu (1:54)

But then when I was like 30 to 39, it's really different. Right.

Doree Shafrir (1:59)

Right. Right. Exactly.

Oh, my goodness. What else is going on with you?

Elise Hu (2:05)

Well, by the time that this airs, the kids will be back from camps. But currently, we're getting ready for sleepaway camp. They only go for a week, but it's a great opportunity for them to kind of like be together and in an elastic environment. And they were not going to have iPads or the comforts of home. They're sleeping in cabins of 10 kids or eight kids each. And last year, they came back and really liked it.

Doree Shafrir (2:32)

Have they gone? I was just going to ask, have they gone before? It sounds like they have.

Elise Hu (2:36)

Yeah. So this is the second time for everybody. Luna went when she was a second grader going into third.

And this year, she has a friend going, who's going for the first time, so she's going to be kind of the veteran.

Doree Shafrir (2:50)

Nice.

Elise Hu (2:50)

And Isa has some friends going this time, too.

Ava does not, and so she is not happy about it and has been grumbling. So I hope that by the time we record this, she will actually have gone, because as I have mentioned, she's 5'10 now, so I'm not going to be able to drag her body into any situations that she doesn't want to go to.

Doree Shafrir (3:12)

Yeah, she has her own agency now.

Elise Hu (3:14)

I mean, she always did, but now even more so. Now I can't be like, we're going. Right, exactly. So we'll see how that goes. I'm excited for them.

Two out of the three girls are very psyched. It's such a summer thing to be at camp, I think, and sing campfire songs and do the whole rite of passage that is camp.

Doree Shafrir (3:35)

Well, and also in our day and age that we live in now, for them to be off screens.

Elise Hu (3:42)

It's a big deal.

Doree Shafrir (3:44)

Yeah. Even if you're not a screen-heavy household, there's just screens around all the time.

And so to get them away from that for even just a week is amazing. Absolutely. Speaking of camp, I don't think I mentioned this on any of our previous episodes, but Henry did a rookie day, a trial day at my old sleepaway camp.

Emma Straub (4:12)

Which is so cool.

Doree Shafrir (4:13)

Which is so cool and so fun. And I was so impressed and surprised that he actually stayed the night and was like cool with it.

Elise Hu (4:24)

Yeah.

Doree Shafrir (4:25)

And you know, Henry, like, Henry watches YouTube like on a TV. He doesn't have his own iPad, but you know, he like, he consumes quite a bit of screen time, I would say, like more than I would like, but just for various reasons, he ends up, he ends up watching stuff. And I was like, how's he going to do? Like there's no screens.