Religion in the Me Generation

I suppose there are better things I could be doing with my time right now, but I’ve got all day for productivity.  The chance for a controversial blog post only comes about once every… okay they’re equally as plentiful as the responsibility I’m ignoring. 

I read a thing once that said that facebook is a big cause of depression and anxiety in young people. Or just in people.  Facebook may not have been invented to make people jealous (actually, it kinda was.  It started out as a “Rate these people” site, and that inherently has competition which breeds jealousy – Zuckerberg, you devil!), but it has definitely gotten that way.  Vacation photos, irritating sappy relationship statuses, pictures of happy families… It’s like peeking through your neighbors’ windows all the time, except they know you’re watching so they deliberately try to make you envious of them.  But what gets to me the most isn’t the vacations I wish I could go on or the babies or the relationships (Side note: I’m a big believer that if you constantly advertise your relationship, you’re compensating for something lacking in the relationship itself.  Nobody who is genuinely content with what they have feels the need to talk about it all the time).  What grinds my gears the most is the religious posts – which is weird, since I’m not anti-religious myself.

Bear with me if the last sentence has upset you.  I don’t come out the hero in this post, don’t worry.  I’m friends with lots of different types of people on facebook, thanks to growing up in a conservative town and attending a liberal arts college.  So my facebook is liable to have posts on both sides of most issues, which is something I really like.  But lately, I find my blood boiling more and more with every religious post I see – and as a peace-loving, trying-to-be-mellow person, this reaction is really getting to me.  Things like “don’t worry who others say you are, worry who God says you are” (so you don’t get to be your own person?) and “The Word of God is your most powerful weapon” (should we really weaponize the Bible??) are topping my list of irritants, and I keep finding myself saying, “Shut up shut up shut upppppp keep this to yoursellllfffff!!!” (Keep reading, I swear self-reflection is coming)

Then there are those who are blessed, and they know it.  I’m starting to really despise that word, because I feel that there is an undertone of bragging when someone says they’re “blessed.”   “I’m so blessed because I get to do this/be here/see this/whatever –“ do you not care about the people who have to see these pictures of all your blessings?  What are they supposed to think?  That you’re God’s favorite?  That you’re more blessed and they’re less blessed?  Or maybe they don’t appreciate their blessings as much?  That’s a hard pill to swallow if the blessings you are posting about are things like having a job, something so many people go without these days.  Yeah it’s great to be thankful, but you know what’s even better?  Being quietly thankful.  Seeing things like “I’m so glad God is there to take care of me and answer my every prayer” makes lots of people feel un-taken care of.  Are they not praying hard enough for the things they want?  Or maybe they need to let God take care of it?  That’s not so easy if what’s on the line is something important, like someone’s life or a house.  It’s nice to talk about how great we are and how happy we are with our relationship with God, but I refer back to my statement about public relationship bragging: Are we really happy if we have to keep talking about it?  Now, I know some of the people who are posting these things might be reading this, and I don’t want them to feel attacked.  And I’m getting to the reflection and the other side of the coin, but there are times I wish people could be more private with their beliefs.

This sounds incredibly hypocritical for a number of reasons, coming from me.  For one, I am anything but quiet about some of my beliefs – marriage equality, for one.  I’m not getting into that here, but I know that my outspokenness annoys people in the same way that theirs annoys me, so we’re even I guess.  Then I think about exactly why I want them to shut up about their happy religious funtimes.  And I ask myself if I think religion should be private because it’s for the betterment of society or because I’m insecure about my beliefs and seeing so many people who are so satisfied make me jealous.  These statuses are the equivalent of vacation photos – I wish you’d take them down because somewhere a small part of me wishes I could be there.  Sometimes.

I’m still not sure where I stand on matters of religion.  I think I’m a lot different from the Youth Group Kid I was in high school, and I struggle a lot more with things I used to accept unquestioningly.  But I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing.  I’d like to think that we should strive for a personal, private relationship with God.  Something we can be satisfied about, knowing it is uniquely ours and not the same as anyone else’s relationship.  This is where the public displays begin to annoy me.  We’re perfectly content with what we have until we see what everyone else has.  There are even times I feel people try to make others feel inferior to their sparkling faith – and maybe that’s me being paranoid or maybe that’s their unconscious selfish side taking over.  The idea of this personal definition of religion, personalized, monogram brand of faith that doesn’t subscribe exactly to any kind of organized idea is something that I thought was pretty enlightened of me to come up with.  Being in a liberal arts college showed me more than anything that everybody is different, and that maybe religion isn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of thing.  Lots of my closest friends were doing it; we formed our own little enlightened circle of religious free thinkers.  We were practically walking oxy-morons, without the morons.  Morons aren’t enlightened, like we are.  What if the solution isn’t in a contradictory 2,000 year old book? What if the answer lies in a combination of meditation, research, thinking, prayer, art, literature, conversation, love… What if the Answer, the Purpose, is simply to Seek?  How beautiful that such a solution fits everyone while at the same time providing room for customizing!

I’m going to switch my focus for a minute here.  A friend recommended to me the book Generation Me, by Jean. M. Twenge, Ph.D.  It’s about the generation of 20-somethings, teens, and kids who were raised with participation trophies, “I am special” episodes of their favorite TV shows, and a constant focus on the self.  Self expression.  Self esteem.  Self image.  Self.  Self.  Self.  Regardless of how you were raised individually, the idea that we should love ourselves and that we can do anything has completely shaped our culture and media.  How many TV shows and movies have we seen that tell us, “You can do anything you set your mind to” or “Just be yourself – find what’s right for you!”  This, according to the book, is an idea that is relatively unique to our generation.  Previous generations did what they were told and had few choices.  They went to church because it was what you did, they took jobs similar to their parents’ and did not often leave the towns they grew up in.  They were not taught to find their true selves (this is a movement that was started in the 60s and 70s and led way to self-help books, self-discovery seminars, and Oprah).  Kids were not included in important decisions, like which house the family moved to (or whether they moved at all), and they were rarely allowed to wear mismatched clothes because “it was their way of expressing themselves.”  Children weren’t a choice, they were a duty, and those who remained unmarried and/or childless were talked about behind hands in public places.   

The idea that what we think and feel matters is fairly new, and we delight in challenging social orders at every turn.  Even the concept of religion has changed drastically as this new movement has spread.  The book states, “Many young people abandon organized religion because of… the restrictive rules it often imposes” (Twenge, 34).  Church membership has fallen, and free-thinking has risen.  But just because people don’t don their Sunday best and cram themselves into pews does not mean that they do not strive to live decent, moral lives or subscribe to any kind of faith.  A recent poll (that I saw in a movie theater) said that young people are twice as likely to volunteer as their elders, who were forced to attend services.  Isn’t that what we’re all trying to accomplish with these teachings and preachings?  To get people to do the right thing, to help others, and to be contributing members of our community?  The book goes on to talk about how more and more people are opting to have a “personal” relationship with God and to accept Jesus as their “personal savior.”  Says the book, "77% [in 2006] were agnostic, atheist, or liberal believers (who believe in a religion but question some aspects of it).  Many don’t adhere to a specific belief system because, As Melissa [someone she quoted in the book] says, ‘I believe that whatever you feel, it’s personal… Everybody has their own idea of God and what God is…’” (Twenge, 34).

This is a new thing, guys.  It used to be that what the Bible says is what it was, and what it was is what it was.  There was no room for questioning.  Free-thinking wasn’t asked for or really welcome (I guess it’s necessary to say that I am a part of Gen Me, and my knowledge of previous generations is limited to what I’ve heard from parents and read in books.  Take that for what you will).  Only in recent decades have we started questioning and exploring en masse.  Sure, there have always been philosophers, free-thinkers, and questioners.  And there were scientists who made discoveries that got them excommunicated.  But we as a generation are rising up and really, loudly, overtly saying, “I don’t have to believe all of that.  I can believe some of it, or none of it.  It’s my choice.”  And our elders are saying, “You disobedient little heathens are going straight to Hell!”

I go back and forth on the idea of introducing my children to religion.  It’s one of those things that I might immediately decide once I see the little bundle of crying every two hours – I mean joy, but for now I’m really not sure how I feel about the idea.  It feels like brainwashing to start so early and leave no room for choice.  But is that me talking or is it Generation Me?  Is it true enlightenment or is it a generation brought up on choices, feeling special (and entitled), and the idea that everything we have should be a reflection of who we are?  Is this just a movement, or is it heading in a permanent direction?  Is it doing a disservice to expose young children to religion against their will, or is it a disservice not to?  Is it possible to have a family that is spiritual but not necessarily religious – without raising them to sound like vapid California models? 

I thought that my views on religion were a product of my own unquestionable brilliance, a result of years of thinking, pondering, writing, exploring, and exposure to different people and ideas.  But is it that, or am simply a product of my generation?  Is this what our participation trophies and everybody is special shirts are getting us?  It was incredibly humbling to read that my perceived enlightened thinking may actually be just self-centered thinking, but I don't really know where to go from here.  

For more unconventional ideas on religion, check out http://theoatmeal.com/comics/religion  (beware some S-bombs)

That song from The Lion King

I have always (read: for the past year or so) said that teaching is one of those things that goes largely unnoticed for several years.  Meaning that students don't really know the impact you had or the importance of what they learned for many years after school ends.  The same, I think, can be said for the reverse.  This is the story of an occasion in which a student caused my life to come full circle -- and in this example, in only took a few months.

There was this one high school Math class that I subbed in quite a few times last year.  The teacher was also a firsty, like me (only she had a real job for herself), and her kids were mostly fun.  At the very least nothing caught on fire, nobody beat anybody's face in, and the kids usually did (or pretended to do) their work.  Most of the time.  Most of the kids.

There was this one kid that I really enjoyed having.  He always did his work, didn't cheat with the other guys (Even though he was friends with them - somehow he seemed to be able to rise above them without seeming "above" them.  It was cool).  He was in band, and he seemed the kind of guy I would have been friends with in school.  Us artsy fartsy types tend to flock to each other, as if we had some kind of radar.  I was reading a Percy Jackson book one of the days I was in his class, and when he asked why, I told him I liked to read what my students were reading.  This applied more to middle school, as Percy is not quite as popular among high schoolers, but the point is that I read a lot of young adult literature.

"You should read Will Grayson, Will Grayson," he said.  "It's amazing."

"Sure, maybe sometime I'll check it out."  I wrote the name down, but didn't ask him how to spell it or who the author was.  I figured I could get the rest when it was needed, or that the clerk at Borders could help me (Borders was still a thing the day I was in his class).

At about that same time, I got really ridiculously in to Pinterest.  My friend Sarah and I would have frequent Pinterest binges, which involved pasting long URLs into Skype, so many links that mine blended with hers and I forgot which ones I'd been to already.  It was a mix of recipes, wedding dresses, quotes, and cute kittens and puppies.  Somewhere in the mix of Sarah-posts was this:

"YES!" I probably said out loud, or if not out loud then definitely really, really loudly in my head.  "This is so perfect!  Whoever that John Green guy is, he's got it goin' on!"  I probably didn't say "He's got it goin' on."  I'm fairly certain nobody says that anymore.  The point is that this quote was awesome (at the risk of sounding like a vapid girl listening to a song in a bar), so me, and I didn't know who the author was.  I don't think Sarah did either, although Sarah if you're reading this, feel free to correct me on that.

Now, a smart person would have looked him up.  Now that I know who he is, I know that a google search would have been really successful.  But that's not what I did.  I just forgot about him and kept the quote in the front of my mind, referencing it every now and then, in that way I have of referencing inside jokes with myself and totally isolating everyone else involved in the conversation.  I should stop doing that.

If I had researched John Green, I wouldn't be able to fully appreciate the random full-circle story that was being written around me.  The next chapter in the story was written at a local coffee shop, where I met to tutor a student for the SAT and occasionally share substituting war stories with Mallory, a fellow sub and former college roommate. 

I'd just told what was no doubt a hilarious and terrible story about the middle schoolers I shared space with on a daily basis.  I say "shared space," because as a long-term sub they pretty much view anything you teach them and any work they do for you as meaningless.  So I guess I "taught" them, and I'm sure there were some who listened.  But for most, I was just that young-looking girl who shared space with them for a few weeks.  Anyway, Mallory said this: "You know what your students need?  I think they need some Brothers 2.0.  I think they'd like some of the videos."  

My first thought was of a robot.  "Hel-lo.  I am Broth-er 2.0 and this is my broth-er 2.0 as well.  We are Broth-ers from the fu-ture."  But they are not robots.  Mallory told me a little about John and Hank, how John is a writer but Hank writes songs, and she was team John but Patricia from college was team Hank, and that maybe my students would find some of their posts interesting.  She said they do videos on anything from the economy to literature to how to load a dishwasher and that I should definitely watch their videos.  I think she might have shown me a video there in the coffee house.  At any rate, it wasn't long before I'd spent hours in front of youtube, thumbing through their videos and subscribing to their channels.  

A few weeks ago I was preparing a lesson plan for an interview.  I wanted to do Catcher in the Rye, which is one of my very favorites ever, but I was afraid that some parents might object to Holden's language, drinking, and renting of a hooker for a little while -- even if it was just because he was lonely and wanted to talk for a minute.  I posted on facebook to see if any of my bookish friends had an alternative to Catcher that I could use -- not to fully plan a new lesson, just to show that I was aware of the potential issues and had prepared a backup.  The responses cam in droves -- The Bell Jar, The Graveyard Book, Look Me in the Eye, and many, many more.  Two suggestions from friends were Looking for Alaska and Will Grayson, Will Grayson.  I did an amazon check on the books that were suggested.  Most of them seemed a little too inappropriate to be an appropriate alternative to Catcher, but at the very least my already huge amazon wish list grew tenfold.  And those two books, they were so familiar.  So.  Familiar.....

And then I got it.  Looking for Alaska was by John Green.  And so were Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherines, two books I'd heard of and had mentally added to my "Judging a book by its title and these sound cool" list.  And The Fault in our Stars, which he talked about in recent videos, and which I had also mentally added to my to-read list.  And Will Grayson, Will Grayson (Which he co-wrote with David Levithan, who also deserves credit and praise and happy thoughts, because his half was really good too).  That book that one kid had told me about that one time.

So thank you, to that kid.  Thank you for being awesome and for introducing me to what is so far a really cool book written by a really cool guy, who said something really cool that Sarah pinned on Pinterest and pasted into Skype.  And thanks, Mallory for telling me about Brothers 2.0 who aren't robots, but who help me pass a lot of time while I'm doing my sitting-around thing while Michael is at work.  And thanks to life for being not quite as random as it seems.

(That song from The Lion King is "Circle of Life."  And it moves us all.)

Edit. I forgot to mention the time in between the brilliant quote and the coffee shop visit.  Someone posted a video of this guy delivering what I felt to be really valid points on a political issue about which I get really fired up.  I reposted the video, having no idea who the guy was, and wondering who this "Hank" was that he kept addressing.

Driving with Fear

I know I’ve already written about this once before, but as I don’t really have any more job-related stories for the time being, I’m going to dive back into fear again.

Last night, I drove home from my friend Heather’s house with only a vague idea of where I was going.  This was only the second time I have ever driven in this direction from her house, since the approximately one million other times, I was driving toward my parents’ house.  This time I was equipped with a broken GPS, no paper directions, little light, and uncertain thoughts of “Have I seen this before?  Was I supposed to go the other way?  Is this another name for 138…” and so on.  Michael was on the phone, but he didn’t exactly have a satellite image of where I was, and his phone died mid-sentence anyway.

After Michael’s phone rudely cut us off, I called back a few (three) times to make sure it wasn’t just a momentary lapse of signal on one of our ends.  Three straight-to-voicemail calls later, I counted his phone as dead and assessed my situation.

I was alone.  I was very probably lost.  It was dark.  I had no GPS and no desire to stop and ask for directions.  The only sound was my iPod playing the first three seconds of songs I’ve grown tired of and immediately skipped.

As I drove, I became increasingly more aware of the reflective properties of my windows.  I tried my hardest not to look too long in either direction, because I remembered that moment in The Grudge when the woman looks out the car (train?) window and sees the reflection of the stringy-haired ghost spirit thing.  Six years later and that image is still burned into my memory, always smoldering like an unattended fire, waiting for the right moment when I fan the flames again.  It always happens unintentionally, but when it does, it is so hard to shake. 

I drove on, forcing my eyes to look ahead of me only, foot pressing harder and harder on the gas and praying there were no cops around.  “Sorry officer, I was speeding because I was afraid of that thing from The Grudge” would probably not get me a warning.  If anything, it would get me dragged out of the car and forced to walk a straight line, something I can’t do very well sober.  I decided that, if questioned, I would lie and say something was chasing me.  “I saw someone come out of the bushes and run after my car.”  Yes, that would work.  How could they prove nothing was there?  “Why didn’t I check to see if I’d lost it yet? Well, uhh… I was really concentrating more on escaping the thing that was chasing me than making sure it wasn’t still chasing me.”  Maybe that would work.  But then there was the question of why would I, a rational human being, would think someone would be capable of chasing a car traveling 60+ miles per hour?  To that I had no answer.  My foot pressed harder on the gas, and I turned up the iPod.

Rufus Wainwright’s version of “Hallelujah” (you’ll remember it from the first Shrek movie) started.  I tried to sing along, furrowed my brow like I do when I sing passionately to Journey songs.  The logic was that if I pretended to be singing passionately, maybe I could let the music and my own private concert distract me from the feeling that my windows were creeping closer and closer.  Eventually I would have to look at them; they were closing in, forcing me to face that terrifying creature, her blue-tinted skin and red eyes slightly covered by her stringy, matted hair.  I took a deep, shaky breath.  “I know this room, I’ve walked this floor…”  What room?  What floor?  What I had once imagined as an opulent, glittering marble floor with a grand staircase extending from it had now transformed into an abandoned house, creaky staircase, and dirty blood-stained floor.  Don’t look at the windows.  Just keep driving. 

“She tied you to the kitchen chair.  She broke your throne and she cut your hair.”  Then she cut off your head and it rolled across the floor, leaving a trail of blood behind it.  The expression you had right before being decapitated would stay on your face forever, frozen as if someone had hit the pause button right before she sliced you.  Just keep driving.  Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look.  Eyes on the road.  Straight ahead.

I resented that I was twisting what I have always thought to be such a beautiful song.  The more I thought about the evil ghost that was almost definitely staring in at me from outside the window, the faster my heart pounded against my ribcage.  I could hear it beating, feel it pumping my blood, feel my adrenaline rising.  Which reminded me of senior year, and made the terrifying drive into the darkness with the evil spirit outside the window even more horrible.

Senior year, I went through a pretty tremendously bad breakup.  It wouldn’t be the last time I went through almost this exact same breakup, but eighteen-year-old me didn’t know that at the time.  Eighteen-year-old me did a lot of late-night writing of bad poetry and crying pointless tears into the pages of the cutest baby blue journal adorned with cartoon animals.  This was a scene that replayed almost nightly for a really long time, this sad, heartbroken girl sitting up on the top bunk of her bed at 1:00AM, ignoring the clock blinking, flashing “GO TO BED” in neon green imaginary letters.  Eighteen-year-old me couldn’t go to sleep, because eighteen-year-old me kept herself awake until the fatigue was strong enough to drag her down on the spot and force into near-comatose slumber.  Lying awake made me think, analyze, pick apart every conversation, every glance, every movement – and look for an answer.  There was no answer, and that made me anxious.  Coupled with the exhaustion, both physical and mental, somehow that anxiety turned into what I perceived to be nausea.  Since about the age of six, I have had this ridiculous, unexplainable, nearly life-controlling fear of throwing up.  And what happens when your anxiety turns into nausea?  Your adrenaline kicks in, augmenting the feeling to a degree you really aren’t prepared to deal with.  And so it went, nearly every night the second half of senior year, eighteen-year-old me stayed up until 2:00 or 3:00, trying to find a distraction that would get rid of the terrible feeling of fear rising in her throat.  For the record, those nights always ended in me drifting off at some point, sleeping a good three or so hours, and that stupid godforsaken alarm jolting me rudely awake.  But it still happens sometimes that when I get afraid, I get nauseous.  Then I get more afraid.  And so on.

And so, with the ghost outside and the dark, reflective windows caving in on me, whispering “Look at me,” in the same way that clown from IT did in the dream I had at age eight, after seeing it for the first (and let’s hope only) time – the nagging nauseous feeling that I so often associate with fear and anxiety kicked in.  “This is stupid,” I said to myself.  “I’m not sick.  I haven’t been sick.  There is no reason to feel this way.”  And my brain searched for a distraction.  I waited for the song to be over, hoping a more jam-worthy song would take its place.  My foot pressed on, and I tried to keep my speed around 60, but with my heart pounding in my ears and the windows daring me to look at them, all I could really concentrate on was getting home.  Now.  Faster.

After what felt like hours, but was more realistically only a few minutes, I started to see familiar landscapes.  I took turns I make on a regular basis and knew that soon I’d be passing the Burma Shave signs with their cutesy sayings.  I breathed a little easier, relaxed my deathgrip on the steering wheel.  The lights from the town penetrated my windows and made them considerably less reflective.  The sick feeling that had come out of nowhere subsided.  The whole ordeal felt like a summer storm – the kind that comes quickly, last a few minutes, then blow away leaving everything a little wetter and shinier than before.  I’d survived the imagined terrors, and finally I was home.

Fear is a strange thing.  I’m afraid of a lot more things than I probably shouldn’t be: the dark, that thing from The Grudge, the clown from IT, serial killers, attics, basements, dying, loved ones dying, having kids because so much can go wrong with babies, throwing up, looking stupid, not getting a job, not getting my contract renewed after I finally do get a job, people lying to me, not knowing something everyone else knows, chairs that are facing me at night, other drivers on the road, this tick bite giving me lyme disease, cockroaches, not being liked, rejection, failure, strangers at night, and gaining a lot of weight, to name just a few. But not heights.  I freaking love heights.

I’m not sure what to do about these fears.  I know some of them are normal things that regular people are afraid of, but some of them kind of seem like I just pointed at a book of things and said, “That.  I’m going to be afraid of that.” 

Michael and I like to play this game with Ferris called “Make Ferris Uncomfortable.”  Our cat spends most of his life teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown, so when he’s lying down comfortably we like to remind him that his world could change at any minute.  We pick up random ordinary things and simply place them near him.  He immediately gets on edge, sniffs the intruding object, bristles at the tail, and sometimes leaves before we have a chance to put another thing next to him.  Okay, we’ve only actually done this twice.  And I guess it’s probably a little cruel of us.  But Ferris and I are alike in that we both spend most of our time worrying about something.  And I guess If I lived in a house with giants I would get pretty uncomfortable if they started boxing me in with their random crap too.  If I did live in a house with giants of another species, my list of fears would be amended to add things like: being stepped on, those giant jerks not feeding me, being pushed outside into the vast unknown, being put in a box and forgotten about, being eaten, and finally, those giant jerks putting their random crap next to me for no reason.  

Other People's Stories

I collect stories.  As a nonfiction major (read: concentration, because it is technically correct), most of the stories are my own, but occasionally I take a break from self-absorption and add other people into the pile.  Other people’s stories are tricky.  I write about other people rarely because I don’t want to misrepresent them.  I don’t want to force them into a tutu and make them perform a ballet dance they didn’t sign up for.  I don’t want to act like I know what I’m talking about when I only know what they’ve told me – what they’ve chosen to tell me.  I avoid other people’s stories whenever I can.  There is one type of Other People’s Stories that I really love, though.  I love those stories that you can only speculate about.  You see something, out in public, at the store, a scrap of paper left behind – something that you just know is the start to a story that is floating out in space.  And you know that it is a story that needs to be told, a constellation that needs lines to be drawn in it.  It is hard to tell Other People’s Stories, yes – but it is much, much easier when you don’t know anything about the person.  When you will probably never meet them, and all you have of them is this small piece of something, a story unwritten.  Those are the Other People’s Stories that I love.

I have decided to tell some of the stories that I have collected.  It is time that I took them out of the jar on my shelf and threw them up into the sky to be written among others.  I’m not sure just how I am going to tell these stories; the methods may vary.  But here is my first Other People’s Story.  If you are offended by language, I suggest you stop reading here, although really I don’t, because you’ve got to open yourself up to the world around you, regardless of how that part of the world may be worded.  I assure you in this case that the language is necessary—and that it is not my own words that I am repeating.

“The Fuck-up”

I don’t remember where I was.  I think it was Milledgeville, but it doesn’t matter.  I could have been anywhere.  This could have been any gas station, because it could have been anybody’s car.  I was getting gas, likely only filling up to whatever ten dollars would get me, and very possibly contemplating if I wanted to actually put in nine dollars and use the remaining money on an ice cream bar.  I scoped out the other pumps, a precaution I have developed as a paranoid young woman who views everybody as a potential rapist/serial killer, and I saw the car.

It was an old car, that much I do remember.  The kind of car that your parents give you that you really don’t want, but it’s better than no car, so you take it and try to play it off like it’s vintage.  But really it’s right there on the line between vintage and just an old car that hasn’t gained vintage coolness yet.  Instead of looking like a rockstar car connoisseur, you just look poor.  Of course this is all speculation.  Maybe the kid wasn’t poor and maybe it was really a vintage car.  What do I know about cars?  What really caught my attention wasn’t the questionable vintage-ness-bordering-on-hand-me-down-ness of the car.  It was that carved into the car, covering the entire passenger side in a way that would be impossible to conceal, was the word “Fuck-up.”  I don’t remember if it was hyphenated or even if it should be.  I imagine that whoever carved it was not the kind of grammarian or linguist who would pause to look up the proper punctuation of the word or words.  But there it was, bold, harsh, screaming.  Fuck-up.

There is no getting away from a mark like that.  That guy had to drive his car around town, pick up movies at Blockbuster, fill up with gas, drive himself to class, to friends’ houses, to parties, home to his parents – with the word “Fuck-up” glaring at him.  Really, the “Fuck-up” was glaring at other people on the road, but the message was clear.  Everybody saw that carving.  Everybody he passed, whether he cut them off or graciously yielded the right-of-way – it was there.  And for that reason, it may as well have seared through the door, burning the letters into the car’s interior. 

We are all fuck-ups at some point.  Except maybe for my brother, who has probably never done anything worse than steal a fork from a small roadside diner, everybody has those low moments we’d rather pretend didn’t happen altogether.  In high school I left the kid I babysat at home because my sister was there and I was only going to be gone a minute.  I don’t know what I was thinking.  It was by far one of the worst things I have ever done, and it was almost like the me who is logical and thoughtful and conscientious floated out of my body and some other me came in – one who was stupid and careless and selfish and who had serious problems with priorities (I would just like to point out that there is more to that story, but that it is not the focus here).  We all have those mental snapshots that belong in the mental bonfire, but no matter how hard they are to forget, those moments are not physically etched into our possessions.  When I open my laptop, you can see scratches.  They’re from the many times the computer was dropped and from my cat sleeping on it, his claws that we never clip scratching into the aluminum cover.  The marks don’t spell out my weaknesses, short of maybe being a poor computer owner.

But imagine if they did.  What if my computer spelled out “Irresponsible”?  Or “Unemployed”?  I could go further and say “Only one in class to not get a job,” but I doubt people would really take the time to read that.  What if my car had “helpless” or “worthless” or some other “-less” carved  into the side door, out there for everyone to see my lowest moments?  I (and I imagine most of the rest of us) walk through life constantly afraid of judgment.  I want people to like me, to think I’m funny and interesting and smart.  I want people to overlook the job situation and believe me when I say that it’s not my fault, I am trying everything I can.  I want people to want to be my friend and to care about me and to please, please, please not see what I see on my worst days.  For this guy, this Fuck-up, everybody could see all the time that he was worthless and hopeless and probably irresponsible or lazy or a liar or a cheater or a heathen.  It will not matter what he does to redeem himself; short of buying a new car, there is no way out of a branding like that.

I don’t know what he did to deserve the carving.  Maybe he cheated on his girlfriend, maybe he stole his best friend’s fiancé.  Maybe he was responsible for keeping up with something and lost it: a ring or a document or a picture of the enemy for a foreign network of spies.  Probably not that last one.  His side of the story is unfortunately silent.  But I feel like even if he did get a chance to voice his side, we wouldn’t be able to hear anything over the sound of the word “Fuck-up,” shouted like a battle cry from the side of his car.  

On stupid questions and brilliant arguments

It is probably no surprise that I was that kid in class who asked questions the teacher couldn’t always answer.  I argued my answers, challenged the book, and debated what I believed to be the correct answer.  Most of the time I was probably just being arrogant and annoying.  But sometimes I was right.

I remember one time in particular; I was in the third grade.  We were learning cardinal directions, and the teacher said that in front of you is North, behind you is South, to your left is West, and to your right is East.  I was confused.  The teacher was facing us.  Could she have a different North than we did?  So I asked:

“But if two people are facing each other, which one is really looking North?”

She repeated: “In front of you is North, behind you is South, to your left is West, and to your right is East.”

“But… Then when if you’re facing one way and then you turn?”

“In front of you is North, behind you is South, to your left is West, and to your right is East.” 

I blame her for why I can never tell my left from my right.  I probably shouldn’t; I know that’s my fault.  But I’m not always clear-minded and rational.

Case in point: Once in fourth grade, I asked probably the dumbest question I have ever asked.  It had nothing to do with what we were studying, but it needed to be answered right freaking then, so I raised my hand.  The conversation went like this:

“Are there any questions”

My hand went up.

“Yes, Kimberly?”

“Do cats really have nine lives?”

“About the Civil War.”

“Oh.  Then no.”

The beautiful poetic justice for that came a few days ago, when I was subbing in a Social Studies class, and I had to field almost that exact same question.  There you go, Mrs. Blasingame.  I guess we’re even.

This one is dangerously close to losing about four of his lives.

Today, I had to answer questions that I couldn't answer.  It wasn't that I didn’t know the answer, it was that the children wanted to challenge the book.  The vocabulary word was ‘peculiar.’  The question was, “Which of the following could be considered peculiar?” 

                a) a rich person begging on the street

                b) a pet lobster

                c) a person who doesn’t eat meat

                d) a mouse chasing a cat

This is one of those questions that can have more than one answer, and I’m willing to bet that some students said all of the above were peculiar.  The answers, as given by the book, are A, B, and D.

Suddenly, the students started talking out.

“What?  Not eating meat is peculiar.  Why wouldn’t you eat meat?”

“I don’t eat meat!  I am not peculiar!”

“Having a pet lobster isn’t weird!  My uncle has a pet lobster!”

“Then you uncle is weird.”

Oh, so I guess you're saying Homer is weird too ---yeah, okay.  He's pretty weird.

I listened to their claims, but I told them that any arguments would have to be taken up with their teacher tomorrow.  I can’t make the call, but if it were up to me they all had valid points.  How can you make an opinion question have a right or wrong answer?  What are we teaching students?  The question is designed to measure the student’s understanding of the vocabulary word.  If the student can justify how the word applies to the answer they selected, doesn’t that prove that they understand the word?

Then there was this one:

Which of the following is a dwelling?

a)      A garage

b)      A cabin

c)       A cottage

d)      A church

The answers are B and D.  Sorry if your family lives in a garage room of someone’s house.  I guess that’s not considered a dwelling.

Then a student said, “What?!  A church is too a dwelling!  It’s a dwelling for God!”

Oh boy.  Now we’ve made a what-the-heck omelet, and we are walking on the eggshells. 

I have always disliked multiple choice tests.  As a student, I was terrible at them, because I could almost always talk myself into picking each option.  “A works… but B works too.  C could work if you read it like this… “  Then I would tiptoe up to the teacher’s desk.  “All of these could be the answer!”

“Don’t think about it too hard.  Just read the question and pick the answer.”

Oh.  Is that what I was supposed to do?

Thanks to Shipp for this picture!  Oh hey - here's his tumblr! 

I hated being told not to think too hard.  For one, I have always been a chronic overthinker.  It’s not something I can turn off, because I don’t know what an appropriate stopping place for my train of thought is.  If I have always thought this way, I can’t exactly say to myself, “Annnd here.  Here is where you can stop thinking.  Disembark from the train and select B because, when one stops their train of thought at this particular destination, it becomes clear that B is the answer.”  It is impossible.  In fact, thinking about overthinking is probably overthinking.

The other issue I had/have with being told not to think about it too much is that I was at school.  To learn.  To think.  What was I supposed to do, if not think?  What are we teaching students by saying “Don’t think too hard.  Just write down that  B is the answer.  If you don’t have B as your answer then it is wrong”?  What does that say to the brilliant argument posed by the girl with the uncle’s pet lobster?  What does it tell the boy who sees a church as a dwelling for God?  Are these students going to become lifelong learners, lifelong seekers of truth, if they are told this early in their lives that they are wrong to examine something from different angles?

No.  They are not going to turn into seekers of truth.  Getting a good grade matters more than getting to win an argument against a book or a teacher.  The answer is B.  If you don’t have B, you are wrong.  If you have something other than B, you are wrong. 

North is always in front of you.

Adolescents: They are exactly like animals.

There is a distinct advantage to students seeing you as a “sub.”  When they don’t see you as a teacher – sometimes not even as an adult – you are not deemed worthy of the “good behavior” façade that other teachers get.  At first this sounds like a serious drawback.  How can not being seen as a teacher possibly be a good thing?  The answer (and maybe this is just me trying desperately to find something good in the lack of respect I am shown) is that, when a student does not see you as a teacher, you have the privilege of seeing who they truly are. 

Again, you’re wondering what could possibly be good about this.  Hear me out.  When a student doesn’t put up the façade for you that everybody else gets, you get a truer, rawer honesty than most other people in their lives.  Students will tell you exactly how they feel about their world: each other, teachers, school, sometimes they may even sneak some global issues in there.  Sure, they are not going to confide in you the same way they would a counselor, but being a substitute provides a beautiful opportunity to see what’s really going on in there.  And that matters.  What students think and feel about their world matters a lot, and they rarely get any kind of outlet for their voices to be heard.

Of course the downside to getting to see the “Real Students” is that this means you get much less respect than their normal teachers.  When a person (I say person, because it’s not just students who do this, and we know it’s true) is in a situation unlike their usual circumstances, the mask comes off and their true self comes out.  This happens almost unconsciously (and while we’re at it, I don’t recommend sharing this information with your students.  They won’t understand it, they won’t find it as interesting as you do, and they will feel insulted – even if that was not your intention).  In my time as a long-term substitute, I had students texting, throwing paper balls, throwing books, one even took out a knife to show his friends – all things that these kids would never have done with their regular teacher.  These events created a somewhat endless cycle of negativity between the students and me.  First, the thought (or maybe even the mentioning from an outside source) of they don’t act like this for their normal teacher.  What am I doing wrong?  Followed by the anger/humiliation that something like any of the above could have actually happened.  Followed by the punishment.  Followed by the new personal vendetta of the student against me.  Followed by more bad behavior.  Followed by me, one step away from rocking in a fetal position and wondering into the chaos around me “Why don’t they respect me?”

I’m beginning to think that the issue is even greater than just a lack of respect for me.  These types of students regard me not just with a lack of respect, but with apathy.  It’s not that they don’t respect me, it’s that they care so little what I think and what I want from them, that it literally does not matter.  It makes no difference what I do.  I could ask them nicely, I could ask them meanly.  I could threaten to distribute some kind of discipline strike, I could actually distribute some kind of discipline strike.  I could write them up, send them out.  It does not matter.  Because this is who the student really is at their core.  To that super helpful student who says, “They’ll only listen to you if you punish them”:  No.  No they don’t.  I do that, and it still doesn’t work.  The issue is not that I am not scary enough for them to listen, it’s that they don’t know how to behave.

This prompts the question, what is wrong with these kids?  I find myself asking that more often than I should, sometimes even out loud. Sometimes loudly out loud.  How can a student be so rude, so apathetic, and treat another human being (not to mention an adult with a job who does her best to stay afloat in today’s craptacular market) in such a terribly undignified, degrading way? 

There is actually an answer to this.  I read today in a National Geographic magazine (Yes, the day has finally come where I read these things for genuine entertainment/educational value on my own will!)  that the brain of an adolescent more closely resembles its original primal state than that of an adult.  It’s not that the brain is still growing in the teenage years; it’s actually just about finished growing.  It is however, still developing and organizing itself.  In much the same way that they are learning how to walk and move with this newer, longer, larger body, teens use their brains in a similarly awkward manner during this time of organization.  This could be to blame for all their mood swings and inconsistencies -- they're not really sure what to do with themselves.  During the adolescent years, the brain somewhat reverts back to its ancestral state, and we become more focused on things like survival and instant gratification.  Being that humans are social creatures, it would follow that those who are the best at getting along and working together would have been the ones naturally selected to carry on.  This could be the answer to why our social life matters so much in adolescence.  Teenage girls treat their blue jeans, cell phone covers, and whether or not the popular kids let them sit at their lunch table as a matter of life and death, because as far as evolution is concerned, it is. 

If fitting in with the pack matters for survival, then things that appear trivial to us matter a great deal  to them.  It’s no secret that adolescents are always seeking approval (no, not yours.  They don’t care much about that).  I remember a class of mostly boys in which every boy would crack a joke, then immediately turn to look at the Leader.  Every one of them (Leader included) denied that this happened, but from an outside perspective, it was undeniable.  I felt a bit like Jane Goodall watching Gorillas.  “And see how this one checks yet again with the Alpha, to make sure his move has been deemed worthy.  Ah, it has been.  He has been granted permission to stay with the pack.”  Watching adolescents is exactly like that!  

                                              

                                                     Except that this one reads willingly. 

Kohlberg (And Esquith, if you’d rather a more simplified, kid-friendly version of the levels) would say that most adolescents operate on level three of moral development/motivation.  They do things to please others.  The problem is that they don’t seem to be interested in pleasing the person who (we think, and find it increasingly irritating that they don’t agree) matters the most. 

But it’s not that they don’t care what you think.  It’s not that they’re rude, nasty, or terrible little demons.  It’s that deep down, at their core survival instincts, they are vying for the approval of the pack leaders.  And, unfortunately that matters a whole lot more to them than anything you have to say about grammar, algebra, or history. Sorry.  But hey, some of them do care.  Those are the ones who have stopped equating survival with acceptance from peers and started seeing it as attainable through personal success.  The hope is that the rest will get there one day, but we don't want to lose our ability to socialize, either. 

...are these even words?

On how much life changes in three years... and sometimes doesn't.

There was a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother in which the three main guys reveal that they get together every three years to watch the Star Wars trilogy and reminisce about where they were three years ago. As a next step, they would fantasize about where they thought they would be three years later -- which for these guys always involved being some combination of successful, married, rich, and heavily moustached.  Considering I spend most of my days trying not to get to the point where I sit and stare at the wall thinking, "This is my life, huh," it may surprise you, my loyal reader, to read that I am about to the exactly that.  But when a favorite show tells me to do something, I usually do it.  Whether it's "Don't go away, we'll be right back," or "examine your life," I am a slave to the television.  Always have been.  Something about brainwaves being manipulated at night; I don't know.  Anyway, here it is.

Three Years Ago:
Three years ago, I was 21.  Exciting age of finally legally doing what I had already been doing in verrry responsible moderation being one year away from graduating college aside, I had no idea what I even wanted to be doing in three years.  I had virtually no plans.  Something like grad school or maybe teaching, but I had no idea how to accomplish either of those things.  They tell you that you need to go to college in order to get a job.  And, in many cases, you do.  What they don't tell you is that having a college degree does not magically put you in some kind of Stonecutters-esque secret society in which your name is spontaneously carved on a list and distributed to all potential employers or graduate school-runners.  The fact that I refer to deans of colleges which contain graduate schools as "Graduate school-runners" is a further testament to my cluelessness.  Want to know a secret something that everyone who talks to me for two minutes on any given day already knows?  I still have no idea what I'm doing.
Facebook timeline (Which is growing on me, I have to admit) reminds me that about three years ago my boyfriend of three months was just getting out of the hospital (nothing major, just a failing liver inadvertently caused by self-medicating for a benign tumor in his femur, which doctors overlooked for two or more years) and we took an exciting trip to the beach with friends.  That year was my SAI formal, which I planned (poorly) and spent so much time stressing out over it (panicking at last minute) that I literally made myself sick over the ordeal.  Because that's a real-world problem: booking the proper venue for ladies and their dates to parade around in fancy clothes for a few hours.  But I can't be too hard on 21-year-old me.  It's not fair to yell at a child for crying when their ice cream falls to the ground, just because one day they will be 24, barley have a job, and somehow have to figure out how to pay for that degree that has so far served no other purpose than giving the cat something to knock over at night.  For a child, fallen ice cream is a legitimate problem and is capable of causing distress, in the same way that 21-year-old me lost sleep over booking the pavilion and figuring out exactly how to make her bangs lie flat without parting in the middle (result: unsuccessful).
21-year-old me wrote papers the night before they were due, drank coffee like it was water, and occasionally skipped class simply because she couldn't find a parking space (I'm not kidding.  The parking situation in college was insane).
21-year-old me went to Europe for the summer, spent two weeks in England, a weekend in Paris, and  a few hours in Scotland and Wales.  21-year-old me discovered that she was not cut out for a long-distance relationship, and when 21-year-old me became 22-year-old me, moved in with her boyfriend to start an exciting adventure of never doing dishes or laundry, spending way too much money caring for a cat, and always having someone to cuddle with at night.

Present
I think the three-years-ago version of me just thought everything would fall into place by now and "work itself out."  Present-me is learning that the universe at the same time adamantly follows that policy and adamantly doesn't.  You can't sit around a wait for a job to come to you.  But, after you send resumes and "please hire me emails" and leave messages with enough secretaries, there is a finite amount of things you can do from there.  Present-me is learning to keep that slowly rising scream quiet, but it's a persistent little monster.  I try not to wallow, but there are times when I want to sit down and make a "reasons my life sucks" list.  I do not do this, at least not in list form.  Occasionally I do it on Skype, in essay form, when unsuspecting friends ask the seemingly harmless question of "How's it going?"  Perfectly aware that they do not want the sad-sack story I am about to give them, I proceed anyway.  They say something like, "It'll get better!" and then I talk about my cat until we both get bored enough to be finished with the conversation.  But those are the bad days.
On the good days, I have amusing anecdotes from the day's adventures in substitute teaching or a story about my drive to or from work or the dream I most recently remember.  On the good days, getting to eat chocolate and watch The Simpsons is a perfectly acceptable high point of the day, and whether or not I can find something to complain about, I don't.  I will still talk about my cat.

Three Years from Now
In three years, I dearly hope that I have a full-time teaching job and am John Keating-ing my way through my days.  I will find a class of students who are perfectly motivated, respectful, understand my unique brand of sarcasm - rather than mistaking it for rudeness - and who come to class eager to discuss literature and hear what I think about what was written.  No.  Just about none of that will actually happen, I'm sure.  For one, I'd be doing my students a disservice to inundate them with "this is what I think about everything" and not give them the opportunity to explore their own consciousness.  Secondly... Let's be real.  High school hasn't change since I've been in it, and I doubt it will change when I'm teaching it.  Regardless of how exciting I am, somewhere in the back of their heads, they will still probably be wishing they were asleep, or playing video games, or eating chocolate and watching The Simpsons.  If I have a job at a school where I am accepted and I don't come home and try to wash then sleep every day off of me -- I'll say good enough.
I'll be 26 then.   No I won't.  I can add.  I'll be 27.  It's strange to say that I might be married, maybe even working towards having smaller, louder, needier versions of myself running around stinking up the place -- but I suppose it's a very real possibility.  I guess that will have to depend on the job situation, though.  If I'm still waiting by the phone every night for Subfinder to give me a job for the next day, I highly doubt procreation will be in the cards just yet.
I'd like to not be so tremendously in debt, but I've found that if you view loan payments as any other bill, it's a little easier to write the check.  Pay rent, pay car, pay car insurance, pay phone, pay cable/satelite/internet, pay for those five or so years I spent on an education that has hopefully started mattering by now.... See?  It's easy!  Whistle while you do it, and it's even more fun (whistling significantly reduces the fun-factor for me, as I can only get out approximately two pitches.  You do not want to hear my "Twinkle twinkle")!
I imagine I will still probably sing terrible improvisational ballads about whatever food I am cooking and, and I will still bore the pants off of anyone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a cat story.