**If religion is one of your "hot-button issues", I invite you to stay, but will certainly understand if you choose not to read further. I welcome comments!
I have never been an incredibly religious person. I grew up mostly Catholic but was born, and can't remember being, Baptist, and in middle school I started going to a Presbyterian church; but I have never identified closely with any particular sect. In high school I went through a phase where I was really into Christian rock, but that was about as deep as I got.
For a long time I was just kind of told that there was a God, that He was good and He cared about me, and all those other Sunday school cliches, and I accepted it without question. It didn't really do much to govern my life. I mean, Catholic school kids were just as bad as public school kids, only they got routine forgiveness checks. So even in a school where we started every morning with a prayer (and when we got a new principal, an assembly in the hall to hold hands and sing), God wasn't really as present as everyone tells you He is supposed to be. He just kind of floated in the background, a forgotten fact, but a fact nonetheless, at least to us kids.
I accepted it without question, up to a point in junior year when "some shit went down", as the kids say, and I went through what is routinely termed "a crisis of faith". I don't know that it was much of a crisis, but I asked all the usual questions:
Is there a God?
If there is, why does He let crappy things happen to me?
If God cares about everyone, why does everyone get hurt?
Does he get so caught up in worrying about other people's problems that He has to let some people slip through the cracks?
and one of my own:
Am I happy believing that God exists?
Because that seemed to be the biggest thing, to me. Everyone I knew who believed in God seemed to be really happy about it all the time. It made them more sure of themselves, and they emanated this happy glow when they thought about God, or talked about God. They seemed to know exactly what they were doing, and if they didn't, God would handle it. I'd never felt like that. And there were other people, who I didn't know so well, who I'd really only heard about, who were always angry, and thought that God hated everyone, and were always citing "the wrath of God". Believing in God seemed to only make these people really angry, and that just didn't hold with what I thought I knew, or felt, about God.
Whether they were happy or angry, they were stirred up about it. They were emotional; it rocked them. I never felt rocked. So maybe, by the transitive property or something, I didn't really believe in God.
I went to camp that summer feeling annoyed and disappointed, and my answer ended up finding me, in the form of my favorite camp counselor, David (total coincidence, not the same David). I told him I wasn't sure what to believe in anymore, and that I felt like kind of a faker at services, and he looked at me and said, very simply, "You don't have to believe any of this, you know. You can believe whatever you want, as long as it makes you happy and as long as it makes you a better person."
I left feeling lighter and happier. To this day, it is the best advice I have ever gotten about religion or faith or God.
Here's what I believe, at 22 and having dealt with, well, a lot of things:
1) I believe that there is a God.
2) I believe that it is more important to be a good person, or a happy person, than a godly one or even a remotely religious one; I believe that it is more important to do what is right by your own personal standards than to align yourself with any sort of side or sect or faction.
3) I believe that you should be tolerant and respectful of everyone.
My version of God, because I think everyone who thinks of God thinks of Him differently, is a lot like the Force (or that midichlorian biology BS, if you saw Phantom Menace first); it exists in everyone, if only even a tiny bit.
My views on religion, which are what I really wanted to focus on here, are related to that analogy:
Some people don't believe in the Force. Some do. Jedi and Sith are two sides of the same coin; the Force is strong in both of them and they are both given the same opportunities to use it, yet one turns out good and one turns out evil. It manifests in different ways depending on the person who uses it.
I'm not fantastic at dealing in theology (I am quite acquainted with the Bible, but somehow I never feel all that qualified to use it; not to mention, it always bothers me when people cite things rather than tell you what they're actually getting at), so I'll use another analogy here.
A few years ago, when I first started playing Dungeons and Dragons, my mom was worried. Her only experience with D&D was when my dad and his friends played it, and they got way too into it, to where it [at least looked like it] bordered on obsession.. My mom thought it was some sort of cult or Satan-worship thing, because her only point of reference wasn't a very good one. (My aunt and uncle, for the same exact reason, worried about Kirsten playing.) I talked to Mom about it, and told her it was basically just a bunch of friends sitting around a table to roll dice and eat chips (not to mention, Al's dad would be home the whole time, geez Mom), but she still worried, and didn't really understand, until we finally had a session at my house and she got to see it firsthand.
After that session I sat her down and kind of talked her through the game, and she got to see how it really worked, and why I had so much fun with it. I explained to her that D&D (like video games, or literature, or faith or religion) wasn't an inherently bad thing; it just depended on who was playing it and how they played it. It should be good, and it should be fun, but some people take it too far.
In other words, my whole piece here boils down to a very simple philosophy when it comes to religion: Hate the player, not the game.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Encyclopedia Kelli and the Problem With Boys
Most of my life I have been what my parents call (and I really hate this term, dear reader, so you better be happy) "boy-crazy".
My mother thinks that this is because my parents got divorced when I was four and my father moved to a different state when I was eight. (She likes to remind me of this particularly when something stupid happens in my love life. Which is all the time.) For the record, I do not agree with her. I think that has more to do with my narcissism than anything else.
But there's definitely a pattern, though I don't know if it's necessarily a "daddy issues" pattern (I suffered a mild form of hate-seizure from typing those words out), that's plagued me since I was first old enough to start liking boys; I start off liking/dating someone I think is a really nice guy, who over the course of our relationship is revealed to be completely screwed up.
This cycle has mercifully (seemingly) been broken by David. (I say "seemingly" because if David's going to turn out to be screwed up, having not known about it for a year is going to make it exponentially larger, like killing gardeners and keeping them in that room in his house with all the Christmas decorations (I'm sorry, sweetie, for the record, I don't think you kill gardeners, but one must be prepared for anything).)
Prior to David, this awful trend had been going on for about nine years. Exactly nine years, actually.
In eighth grade, I got my first boyfriend. He was a boy I met up at the library, which was a popular hangout for kids from my school, and he seemed perfectly nice. He even gave me my first kiss, and this really nice talking picture frame. Then I found out that he was a smoker (at thirteen years old, that's a dealbreaker), that he had failed out of ninth grade, and had an unhealthy fondness for starting fights with people. He also mooned three of the girls from my class.
(Kyle, I don't know if you read these; you're a cool guy, and I'm glad we're sort-of-friends, but you can't deny that all of the above is true.)
This continued into high school. My first high-school boyfriend (which has its own sort of significance, at least for girls) was a creepy goth kid who I didn't realize was creepy until about a month into dating, and may have actually been retarded. The one after that was George, a Korean violin player who punched trees when he was angry, who I "went out with" for a month, and who still, to this day, eight years later, pops up from time to time to ask me "where we went wrong".
After that things went downhill rather quickly.
There was Andrew, who I dated for a year and a half and turned out to be an incredibly aggressive porn addict (and who actuallywent to prison for two years long after we dated, but that's a story for. . . never, at least not on this blog).
Then there was Steve, the disappearing act,
then Ryan, the sociopath with rage issues,
then Steve (same Steve), the disappearing junkie,
then Justin, the emotionally unavailable bodybuilder,
and then Zack.
Zack doesn't need an explanation.
Like I said, this cycle has very recently been broken by a genuinely sweet guy (who turned out to be a genuinely sweet guy), but for the longest time this same story played out in front of me again, and again, and again. It was far past enough to make anyone want to throw up their hands and proclaim, "I'm done. No more dating for me."
And everyone around them would get it. They'd nod, and say, "Sure. I mean, if you don't want to get eaten by alligators, you don't dive into the alligator pit at the zoo. Makes sense."
So why, you might be asking yourself, did I keep trying? Why did I keep steadfastly convincing myself that this time would be better, this guy would be better, even after it turned out he was sleeping with my friends?
One word: normalcy.
Even as a very small child I got along better with boys than girls. I think this was because I spent what seemed like a lot of time at my dad's house, where he lived with his best friend until I was eight. I wore overalls and hung out with boys (well, men) on Tuesdays and the weekends, and even though I didn't understand much of what was going on (because I was six), I could see that maybe other little girls were different than me.
In second grade, before I moved to St. Valentine's, I had two best friends, Michael and Darnell. We had a club, and Michael was the president. He named me Secretary (my mother later told me, when I was much older, that this was because his father had had an affair with his secretary; as you can imagine, this BLEW MY MIND), and Darnell was Vice President. We felt very important, going about our club duties with an air of superiority. It was, after all, very special to have two friends on permanent reserve to help you pass out cupcakes on your birthday.
One day on the playground, another little girl in my class ran up to where I was playing under the monkey bars (under, never on: I was afraid of heights), patiently waiting for Michael and Darnell to return from being sternly lectured by a teacher about rubbing dirt on other students, and said, in a very presumptuous way, "You're friends with boys?"
"Yeah!" I said enthusiastically. I mean, we were in second grade. Surely we were all mature enough to be friends with the opposite gender. "Boys are fun."
Her nose wrinkled. "Do you like them?"
"Well, yeah. I guess." I was confused. You were supposed to like your friends, weren't you?
"No no NO," she shouted. "I mean do you want to MARRY one of them? Girls are supposed to want to get married!"
I thought about it for a minute. Marrying someone was a big deal in second grade. Almost all the girls in our class were married. It didn't really mean much except that you held hands sometimes, and gave each other your chocolate milk if you didn't want it. "Sure."
She waggled her finger in my face in a shame-on-you sort of way. "You gotta marry one of them!"
Then she ran away, and I went back to pulling up bunches of grass, thinking about what she'd said. Girls were supposed to get married to boys, and that made sense. Boys were fun. They had the coolest lunchboxes and the funnest toys. I thought very hard about which one of them had the best lunches to trade, and when Michael and Darnell came back to sit with me I said "Hey Darnell, do you want to get married?"
"Okay," he said, rubbing his nose on his sleeve.
It was so simple, so elegant, and it stuck with me when I moved to my next school. Girls were supposed to like boys. Girls were supposed to want to marry boys. As a weird, gawky little girl who preferred reading and Star Wars to makeup and dresses, it was very clear to me that if I wanted other kids to like me, I was going to have to be normal in SOME way. Boys were the obvious answer.
Most of my life, I have been operating under that idea. Even as I got older, and it got more pushed back in my head and became completely subconscious, it sort of governed the way I went about my relationships with people. If you were a girl, boys were supposed to like you; if boys didn't like you, and you didn't like boys ("or girls, or somebody, at least", as it became during high school), there was something wrong with you. You were weird.
So there you have it. It's really stupid, right? Under this cool, quirky facade has always beaten the heart of an eight-year-old girl who just didn't want people to think she was weird.
(If you made it to the end of this exceptionally long and drawn-out post, congratulations: you have won the title of **Bestest Reader Ever**, and you get a prize. Here is a picture of me in fourth grade.)
Nice, right?
**It is worth noting that Steve has cleaned up a lot and remains one of my very good friends.
My mother thinks that this is because my parents got divorced when I was four and my father moved to a different state when I was eight. (She likes to remind me of this particularly when something stupid happens in my love life. Which is all the time.) For the record, I do not agree with her. I think that has more to do with my narcissism than anything else.
But there's definitely a pattern, though I don't know if it's necessarily a "daddy issues" pattern (I suffered a mild form of hate-seizure from typing those words out), that's plagued me since I was first old enough to start liking boys; I start off liking/dating someone I think is a really nice guy, who over the course of our relationship is revealed to be completely screwed up.
This cycle has mercifully (seemingly) been broken by David. (I say "seemingly" because if David's going to turn out to be screwed up, having not known about it for a year is going to make it exponentially larger, like killing gardeners and keeping them in that room in his house with all the Christmas decorations (I'm sorry, sweetie, for the record, I don't think you kill gardeners, but one must be prepared for anything).)
Prior to David, this awful trend had been going on for about nine years. Exactly nine years, actually.
In eighth grade, I got my first boyfriend. He was a boy I met up at the library, which was a popular hangout for kids from my school, and he seemed perfectly nice. He even gave me my first kiss, and this really nice talking picture frame. Then I found out that he was a smoker (at thirteen years old, that's a dealbreaker), that he had failed out of ninth grade, and had an unhealthy fondness for starting fights with people. He also mooned three of the girls from my class.
(Kyle, I don't know if you read these; you're a cool guy, and I'm glad we're sort-of-friends, but you can't deny that all of the above is true.)
This continued into high school. My first high-school boyfriend (which has its own sort of significance, at least for girls) was a creepy goth kid who I didn't realize was creepy until about a month into dating, and may have actually been retarded. The one after that was George, a Korean violin player who punched trees when he was angry, who I "went out with" for a month, and who still, to this day, eight years later, pops up from time to time to ask me "where we went wrong".
After that things went downhill rather quickly.
There was Andrew, who I dated for a year and a half and turned out to be an incredibly aggressive porn addict (and who actuallywent to prison for two years long after we dated, but that's a story for. . . never, at least not on this blog).
Then there was Steve, the disappearing act,
then Ryan, the sociopath with rage issues,
then Steve (same Steve), the disappearing junkie,
then Justin, the emotionally unavailable bodybuilder,
and then Zack.
Zack doesn't need an explanation.
Like I said, this cycle has very recently been broken by a genuinely sweet guy (who turned out to be a genuinely sweet guy), but for the longest time this same story played out in front of me again, and again, and again. It was far past enough to make anyone want to throw up their hands and proclaim, "I'm done. No more dating for me."
And everyone around them would get it. They'd nod, and say, "Sure. I mean, if you don't want to get eaten by alligators, you don't dive into the alligator pit at the zoo. Makes sense."
So why, you might be asking yourself, did I keep trying? Why did I keep steadfastly convincing myself that this time would be better, this guy would be better, even after it turned out he was sleeping with my friends?
One word: normalcy.
Even as a very small child I got along better with boys than girls. I think this was because I spent what seemed like a lot of time at my dad's house, where he lived with his best friend until I was eight. I wore overalls and hung out with boys (well, men) on Tuesdays and the weekends, and even though I didn't understand much of what was going on (because I was six), I could see that maybe other little girls were different than me.
In second grade, before I moved to St. Valentine's, I had two best friends, Michael and Darnell. We had a club, and Michael was the president. He named me Secretary (my mother later told me, when I was much older, that this was because his father had had an affair with his secretary; as you can imagine, this BLEW MY MIND), and Darnell was Vice President. We felt very important, going about our club duties with an air of superiority. It was, after all, very special to have two friends on permanent reserve to help you pass out cupcakes on your birthday.
One day on the playground, another little girl in my class ran up to where I was playing under the monkey bars (under, never on: I was afraid of heights), patiently waiting for Michael and Darnell to return from being sternly lectured by a teacher about rubbing dirt on other students, and said, in a very presumptuous way, "You're friends with boys?"
"Yeah!" I said enthusiastically. I mean, we were in second grade. Surely we were all mature enough to be friends with the opposite gender. "Boys are fun."
Her nose wrinkled. "Do you like them?"
"Well, yeah. I guess." I was confused. You were supposed to like your friends, weren't you?
"No no NO," she shouted. "I mean do you want to MARRY one of them? Girls are supposed to want to get married!"
I thought about it for a minute. Marrying someone was a big deal in second grade. Almost all the girls in our class were married. It didn't really mean much except that you held hands sometimes, and gave each other your chocolate milk if you didn't want it. "Sure."
She waggled her finger in my face in a shame-on-you sort of way. "You gotta marry one of them!"
Then she ran away, and I went back to pulling up bunches of grass, thinking about what she'd said. Girls were supposed to get married to boys, and that made sense. Boys were fun. They had the coolest lunchboxes and the funnest toys. I thought very hard about which one of them had the best lunches to trade, and when Michael and Darnell came back to sit with me I said "Hey Darnell, do you want to get married?"
"Okay," he said, rubbing his nose on his sleeve.
It was so simple, so elegant, and it stuck with me when I moved to my next school. Girls were supposed to like boys. Girls were supposed to want to marry boys. As a weird, gawky little girl who preferred reading and Star Wars to makeup and dresses, it was very clear to me that if I wanted other kids to like me, I was going to have to be normal in SOME way. Boys were the obvious answer.
Most of my life, I have been operating under that idea. Even as I got older, and it got more pushed back in my head and became completely subconscious, it sort of governed the way I went about my relationships with people. If you were a girl, boys were supposed to like you; if boys didn't like you, and you didn't like boys ("or girls, or somebody, at least", as it became during high school), there was something wrong with you. You were weird.
So there you have it. It's really stupid, right? Under this cool, quirky facade has always beaten the heart of an eight-year-old girl who just didn't want people to think she was weird.
(If you made it to the end of this exceptionally long and drawn-out post, congratulations: you have won the title of **Bestest Reader Ever**, and you get a prize. Here is a picture of me in fourth grade.)
Nice, right?**It is worth noting that Steve has cleaned up a lot and remains one of my very good friends.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
The Nuclear Flaming Bees: A Kid's Story
Before I tell you this story, I need to publicly thank Matt Flynn (Big Fat Matt) for being so darn excited about my blog, and making me feel guilty for not updating more. Matt, I needed that. Thank you. :]
This is a story I have been hearing from my dad since I was old enough to properly register things I heard. I've had questions about some of the details, but my mom fully corroborates its veracity* (if not without a small sigh and a shake of the head), so I have to either believe that it's true, or that my parents have been playing a very stupid prank on me for twenty years.
I'd prefer to believe it's true, for obvious reasons.
THE STORY OF THE NUCLEAR FLAMING BEES
Way back before I was born, my parents (who were not yet my parents) and a bunch of their friends attempted to go camping on Lake Michigan. I say "attempted" because they set off really late in the day and neglected to phone ahead to any campgrounds to hold a spot (and, oh yeah, it was a weekend near the end of summer so everyone in the world was camping), and by the time they actually got to Lake Michigan at around 10:30 at night, every campground was full.
Except one, which was suspiciously empty. However, everyone was exhausted, and no one thought to point out just then how weird it was that a campground right on Lake Michigan was almost completely empty at the peak of camping season.
And honestly, if they had, someone else probably would've just told them to shut up.
Anyway, like I said, they were all really tired (20-somethings apparently didn't stay up until 5 am in those days, because there was no Internet), so they set up their tents without a second thought and drifted off to sleep. . .
. . . and were rudely awoken (probably with shouts of "F**K WHAT IS HAPPENING") at six the next morning by the soothing sounds of a blaring klaxon, and an amplified voice burbling the words: "THIS IS A . . . . . . . OF THE. . . . . . . NUCLEAR POWER FACILITY."
Yes, they had apparently parked their tents and food and frail, radioactivity-sensitive human bodies across the way from a nuclear power plant. Remember, those actually used to be a thing.
Once the initial shock wore off (and the reason they were the only people at this campground had suddenly been made perfectly clear), my parents and their friends conferred and decided that, rather than hoof it around the coast again only to be told that no, sorry, no one had packed up and left in the last six hours so they were still S.O.L., they would make the best of it here. After all, it was still a campsite, right? There was water, and there were trees, and they were still sleeping on the ground, and wasn't that what camping was all about?
Yes. I know. Like I said, you need to remember that nuclear power plants used to be a thing.
After breakfast they decided to go for a swim in the Lake. All my Michigan readers-- which is to say, with one possibly notable exception, all of you-- have you ever been in Lake Michigan? It's like, really cold, right? Like, winter-in-Michigan-and-it's-not-even-winter cold?
Well on this day, in 1980-mumble, when a nuclear power facility stood on one of its shores, Lake Michigan was as warm as a bowl of takeout Panera soup. There was a lot of skeptical toe-dipping, and after about half an hour of "You go in." "I'm not going in, you go in", the only person brave enough to wade into the water and take a decent swim was my dad's friend Nick, a great big man who has looked exactly like a lion (with a mane and scruffy beard to fit) for as far back as I can remember. This earned him the name Nuclear Nick, which stuck, but I'm sure he's okay with that.
This wasn't really a necessary part of the story, but that's how I always heard it and I like having it in there.
Later, after their swim-- or rather, Nick's swim and their spectating-- they returned to their campsite and were just beginning to scarf down on some lunch when they heard a loud angry buzzing, like a motorcycle, coming from fairly close by. They looked for the source of the noise, and down by one of their feet they saw (and my dad always tells this part the same) "a hole in the ground, and next to it, a cicada wasp as big as your thumb."
Then he holds up his thumb and waggles it, in case anyone had any doubts about the size.
With a sinking feeling, because wasps are not known to be solitary creatures, they looked around and saw dozens more of these holes, many of them with huge wasps in or around them.
Now, if this were me or almost anyone I know, I wouldn't have cared how long I'd been planning this trip, or how long it would take to find another campground or get home; my shit would be in the car and I'd be gone. There would be literally no time between seeing all those bees and me driving away. Whoever was with me could stay there and figure it out for themselves.
As you might have guessed, these guys did not fall into that camp. That night, the men hatched a plan. I don't know what the women were doing; I assume they were either asleep, or telling the men what a terrible idea this was. I can tell you that if my mom was awake she was probably rolling her eyes so hard she got permanent retinal damage, so if she was awake, shame on you, Dad, Nick, Mark, and Kurt if you were there. Shame on you for making my mom need glasses.
Anyway, they hatched a plan, and the plan went like this:
Cicada wasps make tunnels in the ground. Each hole is an entrance to one of those tunnels, which in turn leads to all other tunnels. If you did it at night, when the wasps were all drowsy and in their tunnels, you could squirt some lighter fluid into a couple holes, drop a match in one, and poof! No more bees.
The plan worked pretty well. . .
. . . up to a point.
Because this did not kill the bees. It just made them really pissed off. And on fire.
They rose out of their holes in a fiery swarm, each giant bee made even larger by the ball of blue flame engulfing it, collectively buzzing like a gang of bikers (the bikes, not the actual bikers).
This could have ended really badly, but the fire seemed to disorient the bees just enough that they didn't go for the campers, or the tents-- they just flew up and into the night, their angered buzzing growing more distant as the distinctly Gygaxian form disappeared over the trees. As they watched the bees retreating, presumably never to return, my dad put his arm around my mom and thought,
"This is gonna be a really cool story to tell my daughter."
THE END
*In one final attempt to find out if this was in fact a true story, or if by telling this I would just be pulling the same elaborate prank on my readers that my parents played on me, I verified it with my mom before posting this. She swears it's true. Mom, I'm trusting you here; you better not tell me it was a lie when you're on your deathbed. Dad, that goes for you as well.
**If he was there. I've always heard this story with Kurt in it, and besides, I couldn't deprive you all of Kurt's hair, which is FACTUALLY ACCURATE and really fun to draw.
This is a story I have been hearing from my dad since I was old enough to properly register things I heard. I've had questions about some of the details, but my mom fully corroborates its veracity* (if not without a small sigh and a shake of the head), so I have to either believe that it's true, or that my parents have been playing a very stupid prank on me for twenty years.
I'd prefer to believe it's true, for obvious reasons.
THE STORY OF THE NUCLEAR FLAMING BEES
Way back before I was born, my parents (who were not yet my parents) and a bunch of their friends attempted to go camping on Lake Michigan. I say "attempted" because they set off really late in the day and neglected to phone ahead to any campgrounds to hold a spot (and, oh yeah, it was a weekend near the end of summer so everyone in the world was camping), and by the time they actually got to Lake Michigan at around 10:30 at night, every campground was full.
Except one, which was suspiciously empty. However, everyone was exhausted, and no one thought to point out just then how weird it was that a campground right on Lake Michigan was almost completely empty at the peak of camping season.
And honestly, if they had, someone else probably would've just told them to shut up.
Anyway, like I said, they were all really tired (20-somethings apparently didn't stay up until 5 am in those days, because there was no Internet), so they set up their tents without a second thought and drifted off to sleep. . .
. . . and were rudely awoken (probably with shouts of "F**K WHAT IS HAPPENING") at six the next morning by the soothing sounds of a blaring klaxon, and an amplified voice burbling the words: "THIS IS A . . . . . . . OF THE. . . . . . . NUCLEAR POWER FACILITY."
Yes, they had apparently parked their tents and food and frail, radioactivity-sensitive human bodies across the way from a nuclear power plant. Remember, those actually used to be a thing.
Once the initial shock wore off (and the reason they were the only people at this campground had suddenly been made perfectly clear), my parents and their friends conferred and decided that, rather than hoof it around the coast again only to be told that no, sorry, no one had packed up and left in the last six hours so they were still S.O.L., they would make the best of it here. After all, it was still a campsite, right? There was water, and there were trees, and they were still sleeping on the ground, and wasn't that what camping was all about?
Yes. I know. Like I said, you need to remember that nuclear power plants used to be a thing.
After breakfast they decided to go for a swim in the Lake. All my Michigan readers-- which is to say, with one possibly notable exception, all of you-- have you ever been in Lake Michigan? It's like, really cold, right? Like, winter-in-Michigan-and-it's-not-even-winter cold?
Well on this day, in 1980-mumble, when a nuclear power facility stood on one of its shores, Lake Michigan was as warm as a bowl of takeout Panera soup. There was a lot of skeptical toe-dipping, and after about half an hour of "You go in." "I'm not going in, you go in", the only person brave enough to wade into the water and take a decent swim was my dad's friend Nick, a great big man who has looked exactly like a lion (with a mane and scruffy beard to fit) for as far back as I can remember. This earned him the name Nuclear Nick, which stuck, but I'm sure he's okay with that.
This wasn't really a necessary part of the story, but that's how I always heard it and I like having it in there.
Later, after their swim-- or rather, Nick's swim and their spectating-- they returned to their campsite and were just beginning to scarf down on some lunch when they heard a loud angry buzzing, like a motorcycle, coming from fairly close by. They looked for the source of the noise, and down by one of their feet they saw (and my dad always tells this part the same) "a hole in the ground, and next to it, a cicada wasp as big as your thumb."
Then he holds up his thumb and waggles it, in case anyone had any doubts about the size.
With a sinking feeling, because wasps are not known to be solitary creatures, they looked around and saw dozens more of these holes, many of them with huge wasps in or around them.
Now, if this were me or almost anyone I know, I wouldn't have cared how long I'd been planning this trip, or how long it would take to find another campground or get home; my shit would be in the car and I'd be gone. There would be literally no time between seeing all those bees and me driving away. Whoever was with me could stay there and figure it out for themselves.
As you might have guessed, these guys did not fall into that camp. That night, the men hatched a plan. I don't know what the women were doing; I assume they were either asleep, or telling the men what a terrible idea this was. I can tell you that if my mom was awake she was probably rolling her eyes so hard she got permanent retinal damage, so if she was awake, shame on you, Dad, Nick, Mark, and Kurt if you were there. Shame on you for making my mom need glasses.
Anyway, they hatched a plan, and the plan went like this:
Cicada wasps make tunnels in the ground. Each hole is an entrance to one of those tunnels, which in turn leads to all other tunnels. If you did it at night, when the wasps were all drowsy and in their tunnels, you could squirt some lighter fluid into a couple holes, drop a match in one, and poof! No more bees.
The plan worked pretty well. . .
. . . up to a point.Because this did not kill the bees. It just made them really pissed off. And on fire.
(I had a lot of fun drawing this one.)
They rose out of their holes in a fiery swarm, each giant bee made even larger by the ball of blue flame engulfing it, collectively buzzing like a gang of bikers (the bikes, not the actual bikers).
This could have ended really badly, but the fire seemed to disorient the bees just enough that they didn't go for the campers, or the tents-- they just flew up and into the night, their angered buzzing growing more distant as the distinctly Gygaxian form disappeared over the trees. As they watched the bees retreating, presumably never to return, my dad put his arm around my mom and thought,
"This is gonna be a really cool story to tell my daughter."
THE END
*In one final attempt to find out if this was in fact a true story, or if by telling this I would just be pulling the same elaborate prank on my readers that my parents played on me, I verified it with my mom before posting this. She swears it's true. Mom, I'm trusting you here; you better not tell me it was a lie when you're on your deathbed. Dad, that goes for you as well.
**If he was there. I've always heard this story with Kurt in it, and besides, I couldn't deprive you all of Kurt's hair, which is FACTUALLY ACCURATE and really fun to draw.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
A Nice Little Halloween Story.
On Halloween a couple of years ago, I went out trick-or-treating with some friends in my friend Heather's neighborhood. I was eighteen at the time, and I was not ashamed. Everyone in our group had fantastic costumes. Don't judge me.
For reasons that I'm sure made sense at the time, this is how I (and the other three people in our group) dressed up:
And yes, that was how my hair was cut at the time. Things were different then.
The people in Heather's neighborhood were used to older kids trick-or-treating, and consequently got really into their decorating and costumes. There were skeletons and weird scarecrows on almost every porch, and lights strung from every tree. I was fine with all those houses, even the ones where people jumped out of fake coffins on their lawn.
The only house I had a problem with the last house on our route. It wasn't lit up or decorated in the front at all; the back was a different story.
All the houses in that subdivision had detached garages that were in the backyard. The garage of this particular house was open, and had flashing strobe lights. The Halloween theme was playing from a hidden stereo. There was (fake, but it was Halloween and I was scared) blood splattered all over the walls of the mostly empty garage.
In front of the garage stood (a guy dressed as, but again, it was Halloween and I was scared) Michael Myers. He was looking straight at us.
Next to him was a small table with a bowl of candy on it.
Everyone else in our group laughed and thought this was really fun and hilarious, and ran up the driveway to grab some candy. When RJ, the only guy with us, noticed I was still standing out at the sidewalk, my eyes bugging out, he came back and asked me what was wrong.
I just shook my head and squeaked.
"There's candy back there, come on!"
"NONONO.I'MNOTGOINGBACKTHERE." I'd never seen Halloween, but I was pretty sure that anyone walking up to Michael Myers expecting to get candy out of it was akin to ripping one's shirt open, pointing out their heart and shouting "PLEASE STAB ME."
Also, did I mention it was Halloween? Isn't that like, the guy's one workday out of the year?
RJ sighed. "Kelli, I feel like I shouldn't have to tell you this, but that's not actually Michael Myers. That's just a guy dressed up as Michael Myers."
I shook my head again, more forcefully this time."DOESN'TMATTER."
RJ rolled his eyes and made a face, and said, "Okay, fine. Stay here." He jogged into the backyard, right up to the guy. He didn't even take any candy. At this point our other friends were on their way back, chatting enthusiastically about the experience.
I watched RJ as he talked to Michael Myers, who appeared to either be listening very closely or about to kill him. Then, to my horror, RJ pointed out to the front yard, directly at me.
I started flapping my arms and shaking my head frantically and mouthing "NO NO NO NO", which was probably a bad idea. In any case it did no good, because RJ started heading back towards me, and Michael Myers was following him.
"Why did you do that?" I hissed at RJ.
"To get you candy!" he answered, grinning. It was such a punchable grin.
"I DIDN'T WANT CANDY RJ I WAS PERFECTLY FINE"
I squeaked and shut up. Michael Myers's agonizingly slow steps had finally come to a stop merely a foot in front of me. I stared up at him, my mouth clamped shut in abject horror, thinking two things:
1) If I escaped from this somehow unharmed, I was never going trick-or-treating again, and
2) If I was going to die, I was at the very least taking RJ with me.
The rest of my group stood in a cluster a few feet away, giggling.
Michael Myers then very slowly leaned down, his face just inches from mine. Moments passed. Minutes, even. Possibly hours.
Then he held out the candy bowl.
Now slightly confused in addition to terrified, I reached up and very carefully plucked two pieces from the bowl. "Th-thank you," I squeaked.
"Happy Halloween," Michael Myers said, his voice muffled by the mask.
Then I turned on my heel and sprinted all the way back to Heather's house, not caring one bit if anyone made fun of me the next day.
For reasons that I'm sure made sense at the time, this is how I (and the other three people in our group) dressed up:
And yes, that was how my hair was cut at the time. Things were different then.
The people in Heather's neighborhood were used to older kids trick-or-treating, and consequently got really into their decorating and costumes. There were skeletons and weird scarecrows on almost every porch, and lights strung from every tree. I was fine with all those houses, even the ones where people jumped out of fake coffins on their lawn.
The only house I had a problem with the last house on our route. It wasn't lit up or decorated in the front at all; the back was a different story.
All the houses in that subdivision had detached garages that were in the backyard. The garage of this particular house was open, and had flashing strobe lights. The Halloween theme was playing from a hidden stereo. There was (fake, but it was Halloween and I was scared) blood splattered all over the walls of the mostly empty garage.
In front of the garage stood (a guy dressed as, but again, it was Halloween and I was scared) Michael Myers. He was looking straight at us.
Next to him was a small table with a bowl of candy on it.
Everyone else in our group laughed and thought this was really fun and hilarious, and ran up the driveway to grab some candy. When RJ, the only guy with us, noticed I was still standing out at the sidewalk, my eyes bugging out, he came back and asked me what was wrong.
I just shook my head and squeaked.
"There's candy back there, come on!"
"NONONO.I'MNOTGOINGBACKTHERE." I'd never seen Halloween, but I was pretty sure that anyone walking up to Michael Myers expecting to get candy out of it was akin to ripping one's shirt open, pointing out their heart and shouting "PLEASE STAB ME."
Also, did I mention it was Halloween? Isn't that like, the guy's one workday out of the year?
RJ sighed. "Kelli, I feel like I shouldn't have to tell you this, but that's not actually Michael Myers. That's just a guy dressed up as Michael Myers."
I shook my head again, more forcefully this time."DOESN'TMATTER."
RJ rolled his eyes and made a face, and said, "Okay, fine. Stay here." He jogged into the backyard, right up to the guy. He didn't even take any candy. At this point our other friends were on their way back, chatting enthusiastically about the experience.
I watched RJ as he talked to Michael Myers, who appeared to either be listening very closely or about to kill him. Then, to my horror, RJ pointed out to the front yard, directly at me.
I started flapping my arms and shaking my head frantically and mouthing "NO NO NO NO", which was probably a bad idea. In any case it did no good, because RJ started heading back towards me, and Michael Myers was following him.
"Why did you do that?" I hissed at RJ.
"To get you candy!" he answered, grinning. It was such a punchable grin.
"I DIDN'T WANT CANDY RJ I WAS PERFECTLY FINE"
I squeaked and shut up. Michael Myers's agonizingly slow steps had finally come to a stop merely a foot in front of me. I stared up at him, my mouth clamped shut in abject horror, thinking two things:
1) If I escaped from this somehow unharmed, I was never going trick-or-treating again, and
2) If I was going to die, I was at the very least taking RJ with me.
The rest of my group stood in a cluster a few feet away, giggling.
Michael Myers then very slowly leaned down, his face just inches from mine. Moments passed. Minutes, even. Possibly hours.
Then he held out the candy bowl.
Now slightly confused in addition to terrified, I reached up and very carefully plucked two pieces from the bowl. "Th-thank you," I squeaked.
"Happy Halloween," Michael Myers said, his voice muffled by the mask.
Then I turned on my heel and sprinted all the way back to Heather's house, not caring one bit if anyone made fun of me the next day.
Monday, October 3, 2011
The Dumbest Thing That Has Happened To Me Today
I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for the sudden WALL OF TEXT posts as of late. However, this is a really stupid story, and I promise you won't regret reading it. If for some reason you do, though, feel free to send me hate mail. Also, to break up the monotony a little bit, I took some pictures of me reenacting some of my more. . . potent reactions.
-------------------------------------
For those of you that don't know, before this semester I got a letter stating that I was on academic dismissal. I'm not particularly embarrassed or ashamed of this anymore; oh, I was at first, but if I didn't make mistakes, I wouldn't learn how to fix them. Also it was because I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, but I thought I wanted to do something with art, so I didn't see much point in going to school (and I stopped going to classes for a while because I was sad, but that's a story for another time. Or maybe it isn't).
But I took the appropriate actions-- I wrote a letter for the dean, I got approval from a counselor to come back, and I went to see Dr. Daiek. Not to mention I had a shiny new career goal I wanted to pursue, and I wanted to get on that as soon as I could. Everything was set for my fall classes, including the mandatory learning skills course.
I didn't really mind having to take a learning skills course. I figured it would help me out, since obviously I had issues with studying, and I heard part of the class dealt with planning out your major and transfer guide. I was actually kind of excited about it.
The class met once a week, for an hour, and was "taught" (and I use that word loosely) by a teacher I will henceforth refer to as Professor I. Care. There were about fifteen other people in this class, and they had all been doing poorly in their classes for a myriad of reasons, almost none of them being "they're stupid".
The first day I was pretty optimistic. She handed out a lot of worksheets that we were asked not to hand in. We drew up a list of expectations for ourselves, our families, and our teachers, and discussed them. A lot of people (myself included) had a problem with teachers not really caring about their students or getting to know them, or making exceptions when there were extenuating circumstances. Professor I. Care sympathized with us, saying that she knew how that was and she had vowed she wouldn't be the same. She played a lot of videos from motivational speakers, and a Nike commercial. I left feeling like I was finally getting something done.
The next few weeks were a little different. Professor I. Care was still understanding and sympathetic, but in that patronizing, shaming way that made us feel like we were stupid even though she was telling us we weren't.
Two weeks ago, my growing disinterest turned to complete disdain. The theme of the day was "paradigm shifts". She explained to us that none of us were making our own decisions; that the decisions we made were really other people's decisions that we thought we were making for ourselves. We were all robots, programmed by those around us to make decisions we would never make if we really thought about it. Apparently. But it was okay, because we didn't know better, and she was now going to teach us how to make our own decisions.
This was a mandatory class. I need to stress that. We HAD TO TAKE THIS CLASS in order to get a grade and be off academic dismissal.
Naturally, having made a fair amount of big decisions that had nothing to do with anyone else, this pissed me off. She passed around a worksheet on the subject, and the questions (and my answers) went as follows.
Consider a BIG DECISION you have made recently.
Giving up my son for adoption
What are 2 factors you considered when you made this decision?
Financial stability/my own fitness as a parent
Now THINK. What assumptions about YOURSELF may have played a part in your decision?
That I wouldn't have gone back to school or gotten a career if I'd kept him, and wouldn't have been able to support him/give him a good life
Now THINK AGAIN. Is there SOMEONE or SOMETHING subconsciously taking part in your decision-making?
Uh, no
In other words, now that you REALLY THINK about it, who or what else influenced this decision?
Nothing, unless you count "money"
Is this really your OWN decision, now that you REALLY THINK about it?
YES IT WAS ENTIRELY MY DECISION YOU HACK
At this point I didn't really have many nice things to say about the class. But still, I thought maybe she was just used to these teaching methods working on everybody else, or something. I wasn't happy about it, but I didn't really hold it against her personally.
The next week I went back, and a counselor made appointments with everyone in our class to get them set up with two-year plans and transfer and career guides. After we made our counseling appointment, we had to make an appointment with Professor I. Care. Due to a random system that involved everyone jumping in front of me and another girl, I was the last person to make an appointment.
Professor I. Care looked up at me like she'd never seen me before.
Her: "What's your name again?"
Me: "Kelli Renas."
Her: "Romnas?"
Me: "RENAS. R-E-N-A-S."
Her: (shaking her head) "Oh wow, I don't know why I didn't know that. Okay, when did you want to have your appointment?"
Me: "Do you have anything on a Monday?"
Her: "Sure. What time are your classes?"
Me: "I don't have any classes on Monday. That's why I--"
Her: "Well that's STUPID. What days are your classes, we'll do it then."
Me: (a little annoyed, because I don't want to have an appointment on a day when I have classes, also because I just listened to her fill up every possible Tuesday and Thursday time) "Tuesday and Thursday, 8-10 AM and 3:30-5 PM."
Her: (writes down "3:30" in her book) "Now what was your name again?"
Me: (more than a little annoyed) "I have CLASS at 3:30."
Her: (incredulous) "Well I can't possibly do anything before that, I teach until 3:30."
I MAY ACTUALLY BE HAVING AN ANEURYSM
Me: (baffled) "I KNOW, THAT'S WHY I SAID MONDAY."
Her: "Okay, we'll do Monday. How's 9:30?"
I took my slip and left.
So today at 9:30, armed with my transcripts, two transfer guides, a full plan for the next year (after which I'd have my associates'), and the knowledge that this was going to be a fully annoying experience, I went to my appointment with Professor I. Care.
When I knocked on the door, she turned around and pointed at the folder in my hand. "What's that?"
"It's all the stuff you told us to bring," I said.
"I didn't tell you to bring anything." Then a light went on in her head. "OH! You're my 9:30 appointment! Oh my God, it's so early for me. Okay, go sign in at the front desk."
After being pointed to three different front desks, I finally managed to sign in, and when I got back, she was working on an email. "We still have one minute before our appointment technically starts, so just let me finish this," she said.
I stayed quiet, thinking, You told me to show up 15 minutes early. . .
She finished her email (at 9:32) and grabbed my folder to look through the things I'd brought.
Her: "So you didn't bring a signed registration form?"
Me: (blinks) "A what?"
Her: "A signed registration form. Did you even read this?"
She took out the list of things to bring, which I'd marked up with a red pen to notate what I had, and tapped "signed registration form", at the bottom and in a different area than the list. I shook my head, almost certain that it wasn't on the list the night before.
Her: "Now you have to go back over to the counseling office. Well, that's fine. We have to meet again in a little while anyway." (looks over my transfer guides to WSU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) "You know a Gen Ed degree won't get you a job, right?"
Me: "Excuse me?"
Her: "No one anywhere is going to hire you with a Gen Ed degree. Did your counselor not tell you that?"
Me: (stab of annoyance) "I'm not going there to get a Gen Ed degree. We printed that one off because they don't have a pre-law undergrad program."
Her: "Oh! I notice you only got a 2.0 in English 101. . . " (makes sympathetic face) "Have some trouble with the writing? We can put you in a remedial class, if you need the help. WSU only accepts people with perfect writing, which (in a commiserating tone) I think is just terrible, but if you need the help--"
Me: "My writing is fine, actually. I skipped a bunch of classes. I got A's on everything I handed in."
Her: "Oh. Hmm. . . I notice you're taking kind of a heavy course load this semester."
Me: "Not really. Just Biology and English 2."
Her: "Biology, that's a lot of memorizing stuff. Is that okay for you? Are you having any trouble with that?"
Me: "No, I'm not."
Her: "Have you had any tests yet?"
Me: "Yes. We've had one. I got an A on it. I have an A in this class."
Her: "Oh. Huh. What about Math 113? I see you have that this semester."
Me: "I dropped it."
Her: (makes understanding face) "Was it too hard? Do we need to maybe drop you down to Math 053 to bump up that comprehension?"
Me: (not even bothering to keep the irritation out of my voice anymore) "No, I can comprehend it just fine. It was an 8-10 PM class and I was worried I'd skip."
Her: (nodding) "8-10 AM? Yeah, I have trouble getting up that early too."
Me: "No, 8-10 PM."
Her: "You mean 8-10 AM."
Me: "NO, I mean, 8-10 PM. AT NIGHT."
Her: "Oh my gosh, who would ever schedule a class at 10 PM? I couldn't learn anything, my brain is fried by then."
She grinned. I was not having any of it.
She scheduled another appointment for the end of October ("What's your name again? Romnas?" "RENAS.") and told me I needed to have my signed registration guide with me then, because apparently I didn't actually need it today, and I followed her out to the lobby so she could make copies of all my paperwork.
"You know, it's crazy," she said as she put my transcripts through the copier, "you're really one of the most prepared students I've ever had. I don't think anyone has ever had a course of action this thought out!" She handed me back all my paperwork."See you on the 31st!"
I made this face:
The face of someone who isn't harboring a secret burning desire to punch something.
and then I left and got breakfast, secure in the knowledge that nothing dumber could possibly happen to me today.
I was right.
-------------------------------------
For those of you that don't know, before this semester I got a letter stating that I was on academic dismissal. I'm not particularly embarrassed or ashamed of this anymore; oh, I was at first, but if I didn't make mistakes, I wouldn't learn how to fix them. Also it was because I had no idea what I was going to do with my life, but I thought I wanted to do something with art, so I didn't see much point in going to school (and I stopped going to classes for a while because I was sad, but that's a story for another time. Or maybe it isn't).
But I took the appropriate actions-- I wrote a letter for the dean, I got approval from a counselor to come back, and I went to see Dr. Daiek. Not to mention I had a shiny new career goal I wanted to pursue, and I wanted to get on that as soon as I could. Everything was set for my fall classes, including the mandatory learning skills course.
I didn't really mind having to take a learning skills course. I figured it would help me out, since obviously I had issues with studying, and I heard part of the class dealt with planning out your major and transfer guide. I was actually kind of excited about it.
The class met once a week, for an hour, and was "taught" (and I use that word loosely) by a teacher I will henceforth refer to as Professor I. Care. There were about fifteen other people in this class, and they had all been doing poorly in their classes for a myriad of reasons, almost none of them being "they're stupid".
The first day I was pretty optimistic. She handed out a lot of worksheets that we were asked not to hand in. We drew up a list of expectations for ourselves, our families, and our teachers, and discussed them. A lot of people (myself included) had a problem with teachers not really caring about their students or getting to know them, or making exceptions when there were extenuating circumstances. Professor I. Care sympathized with us, saying that she knew how that was and she had vowed she wouldn't be the same. She played a lot of videos from motivational speakers, and a Nike commercial. I left feeling like I was finally getting something done.
The next few weeks were a little different. Professor I. Care was still understanding and sympathetic, but in that patronizing, shaming way that made us feel like we were stupid even though she was telling us we weren't.
Two weeks ago, my growing disinterest turned to complete disdain. The theme of the day was "paradigm shifts". She explained to us that none of us were making our own decisions; that the decisions we made were really other people's decisions that we thought we were making for ourselves. We were all robots, programmed by those around us to make decisions we would never make if we really thought about it. Apparently. But it was okay, because we didn't know better, and she was now going to teach us how to make our own decisions.
This was a mandatory class. I need to stress that. We HAD TO TAKE THIS CLASS in order to get a grade and be off academic dismissal.
Naturally, having made a fair amount of big decisions that had nothing to do with anyone else, this pissed me off. She passed around a worksheet on the subject, and the questions (and my answers) went as follows.
Consider a BIG DECISION you have made recently.
Giving up my son for adoption
What are 2 factors you considered when you made this decision?
Financial stability/my own fitness as a parent
Now THINK. What assumptions about YOURSELF may have played a part in your decision?
That I wouldn't have gone back to school or gotten a career if I'd kept him, and wouldn't have been able to support him/give him a good life
Now THINK AGAIN. Is there SOMEONE or SOMETHING subconsciously taking part in your decision-making?
Uh, no
In other words, now that you REALLY THINK about it, who or what else influenced this decision?
Nothing, unless you count "money"
Is this really your OWN decision, now that you REALLY THINK about it?
YES IT WAS ENTIRELY MY DECISION YOU HACK
At this point I didn't really have many nice things to say about the class. But still, I thought maybe she was just used to these teaching methods working on everybody else, or something. I wasn't happy about it, but I didn't really hold it against her personally.
The next week I went back, and a counselor made appointments with everyone in our class to get them set up with two-year plans and transfer and career guides. After we made our counseling appointment, we had to make an appointment with Professor I. Care. Due to a random system that involved everyone jumping in front of me and another girl, I was the last person to make an appointment.
Professor I. Care looked up at me like she'd never seen me before.
Her: "What's your name again?"
Me: "Kelli Renas."
Her: "Romnas?"
Me: "RENAS. R-E-N-A-S."
Her: (shaking her head) "Oh wow, I don't know why I didn't know that. Okay, when did you want to have your appointment?"
Me: "Do you have anything on a Monday?"
Her: "Sure. What time are your classes?"
Me: "I don't have any classes on Monday. That's why I--"
Her: "Well that's STUPID. What days are your classes, we'll do it then."
Me: (a little annoyed, because I don't want to have an appointment on a day when I have classes, also because I just listened to her fill up every possible Tuesday and Thursday time) "Tuesday and Thursday, 8-10 AM and 3:30-5 PM."
Her: (writes down "3:30" in her book) "Now what was your name again?"
Me: (more than a little annoyed) "I have CLASS at 3:30."
Her: (incredulous) "Well I can't possibly do anything before that, I teach until 3:30."
I MAY ACTUALLY BE HAVING AN ANEURYSMMe: (baffled) "I KNOW, THAT'S WHY I SAID MONDAY."
Her: "Okay, we'll do Monday. How's 9:30?"
I took my slip and left.
So today at 9:30, armed with my transcripts, two transfer guides, a full plan for the next year (after which I'd have my associates'), and the knowledge that this was going to be a fully annoying experience, I went to my appointment with Professor I. Care.
When I knocked on the door, she turned around and pointed at the folder in my hand. "What's that?"
"It's all the stuff you told us to bring," I said.
"I didn't tell you to bring anything." Then a light went on in her head. "OH! You're my 9:30 appointment! Oh my God, it's so early for me. Okay, go sign in at the front desk."
After being pointed to three different front desks, I finally managed to sign in, and when I got back, she was working on an email. "We still have one minute before our appointment technically starts, so just let me finish this," she said.
I stayed quiet, thinking, You told me to show up 15 minutes early. . .
She finished her email (at 9:32) and grabbed my folder to look through the things I'd brought.
Her: "So you didn't bring a signed registration form?"
Me: (blinks) "A what?"
Her: "A signed registration form. Did you even read this?"
She took out the list of things to bring, which I'd marked up with a red pen to notate what I had, and tapped "signed registration form", at the bottom and in a different area than the list. I shook my head, almost certain that it wasn't on the list the night before.
Her: "Now you have to go back over to the counseling office. Well, that's fine. We have to meet again in a little while anyway." (looks over my transfer guides to WSU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences) "You know a Gen Ed degree won't get you a job, right?"
Me: "Excuse me?"
Her: "No one anywhere is going to hire you with a Gen Ed degree. Did your counselor not tell you that?"
Me: (stab of annoyance) "I'm not going there to get a Gen Ed degree. We printed that one off because they don't have a pre-law undergrad program."
Her: "Oh! I notice you only got a 2.0 in English 101. . . " (makes sympathetic face) "Have some trouble with the writing? We can put you in a remedial class, if you need the help. WSU only accepts people with perfect writing, which (in a commiserating tone) I think is just terrible, but if you need the help--"
Me: "My writing is fine, actually. I skipped a bunch of classes. I got A's on everything I handed in."
Her: "Oh. Hmm. . . I notice you're taking kind of a heavy course load this semester."
Me: "Not really. Just Biology and English 2."
Her: "Biology, that's a lot of memorizing stuff. Is that okay for you? Are you having any trouble with that?"
Me: "No, I'm not."
Her: "Have you had any tests yet?"
Me: "Yes. We've had one. I got an A on it. I have an A in this class."
Her: "Oh. Huh. What about Math 113? I see you have that this semester."
Me: "I dropped it."
Her: (makes understanding face) "Was it too hard? Do we need to maybe drop you down to Math 053 to bump up that comprehension?"
Me: (not even bothering to keep the irritation out of my voice anymore) "No, I can comprehend it just fine. It was an 8-10 PM class and I was worried I'd skip."
Her: (nodding) "8-10 AM? Yeah, I have trouble getting up that early too."
Me: "No, 8-10 PM."
Her: "You mean 8-10 AM."
Me: "NO, I mean, 8-10 PM. AT NIGHT."
Her: "Oh my gosh, who would ever schedule a class at 10 PM? I couldn't learn anything, my brain is fried by then."
She grinned. I was not having any of it.
She scheduled another appointment for the end of October ("What's your name again? Romnas?" "RENAS.") and told me I needed to have my signed registration guide with me then, because apparently I didn't actually need it today, and I followed her out to the lobby so she could make copies of all my paperwork.
"You know, it's crazy," she said as she put my transcripts through the copier, "you're really one of the most prepared students I've ever had. I don't think anyone has ever had a course of action this thought out!" She handed me back all my paperwork."See you on the 31st!"
I made this face:
The face of someone who isn't harboring a secret burning desire to punch something.I was right.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Why I Ruin Everything I Touch: An Essay
On the first day of my Comp class we were given an article and told to write 750 words relating to it. The words"tangentally related" were used, and somehow "750 words related to an article by Cathy Davidson on the modern classroom" turned into "1,020+ words on why I write all over everything I touch".
Today I found out that I had, in fact, misunderstood my teacher's use of the word "tangentally", and therefore I would be an idiot to turn this in, but I just liked it so much that I wanted you guys to see it. So, here you are:
While I was reading Dr. Davidson’s article, I found myself editing it; I was underlining sentences and whole paragraphs, writing my thoughts in the margins, and occasionally drawing little cartoons to illustrate a point. At some point, a thought occurred to me: While most students my age, or people in general, would hate to come across contradictions and other grammatical errors in a scholarly text, I was loving it, and secretly hoping to stumble across more. This is a habit you’ll probably see a lot of in this class, if the first day is any indication, and it’s a habit that I picked up from being a literary magazine editor in high school.
At Churchill, we had a group called “Phaeton” (which we were told meant “one who sets the world on fire”, but I don’t think anyone ever bothered to check; also, I don’t think anyone outside the group knew how to spell it) whose purpose was to collect poetry and short stories from the rest of the school, and whittle this typically huge mass down to a nice small book of student writing to be sold in the last few weeks of the school year. It was run by my favorite teacher, Mr. Wood, who had a unibrow and thought it was his best feature. It wasn’t.*
There were about twelve editors in total, and I was one of two head editors. Being a head editor didn’t mean a whole lot from the outside, but it meant that Mr. Wood, who had the final say, trusted our input a little more.
Every week, we got a Phaeton Packet, sometimes five pages, sometimes thirty, full of student submissions. Predictably, there was a lot of bad breakup poetry, super-dark, Goth-y, “BLOOD ON THE WALLS” poetry, and, most upsettingly, flat-out plagiarism of popular poems or songs. But hidden somewhere under that were usually one or two gems, written by quiet and clever people.
Mondays were Packet days. Phaeton met to discuss the previous weeks Packet, vote on what moved forward and what was thrown out, and at the end of the meeting everyone got a new Packet. I was always particularly excited about this, because I’d finished whatever book I was reading over the weekend and needed something to do in class besides, you know, class work. As soon as the Packet was in my hands, I’d sit down with my purple pen, quivering in anticipation of not only the great works I was bound to find, but the mountain of sheer terrible I’d have to cross to get to them. A lot of the other editors hated Packet days for this exact reason. I loved them. I loved drawing little cartoons and crossing things out and covering entire pages with the word “NO” in feverish haste (which would sometimes be my review; “I just wrote ‘NO’ all over this one”). I walked into my Phaeton meetings proudly, with my Packet in hand, looking like it had been snatched by a graffiti artist and passed around to all of his friends (who were all, incidentally, also graffiti artists), knowing that I had done my homework.
After a while, this peculiar method of involved reading became hardwired into my way of thinking. My teachers didn’t like it, because it meant that novels they handed out in class always ended up ruined, and my friends didn’t like it, because when they asked to borrow a book, they usually didn’t want to see drawings of fish wearing glasses (for reasons only known to myself) all over certain pages.
Now, however, people seem to find it quirky and endearing. For example, when what I shall refer to as “The Great Twilight Craze of Aught-Eight” was taking place, I picked up a copy of the first book. (This is another thing I do; I try to give every book, and every TV show, a chance. I’ve ended up liking some pretty weird things.) After reading about five pages I realized I wasn’t going to get through it, at least not without hating myself for it, and I was angry. I had defended this book and told people not to knock it until they’d tried it, and now I wasn’t going to get to properly try it.
This wasn’t just another bad book I could give up on. This was now a matter of pride. After a few days, in which I repeatedly picked up my copy of Twilight, only to put it down again, cursing and spitting like a cat, I decided that the only way I was going to make it to the end was to Phaetonize it.
I was surprised at how easy it was to read Twilight when I was able to write incredulous statements in the margins, draw a little lightning bolt and write “*CRACK*”over Edward Cullen’s name every time it was mentioned in full (which was a lot, let me tell you), and replace the words “brilliant surgeon” with “brilliant sturgeon”, and a picture of a giant fish wearing a lab coat. I actually felt sad when the book ended; it had been so much fun. If everyone read Twilight this way, no one could possibly hate Stephenie Meyer.
I had thought that my friends would be suitably appalled to hear that I’d read Twilight. It was, after all, widely regarded as a trashy and awful book. I was right, at least at first: Upon telling my friends what I’d done, their eyes would widen and they would ask, “Why would you DO that?” in a tone that suggested I’d casually told them I’d been eating starfish in my spare time. But they would inevitably ask me how I’d finished it, and when I told them, their expressions would turn from disgust to delight, and they’d ask if they could borrow it. They said it would be the reading equivalent of watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which was, of course, quite flattering).
For me, writing all over everything in an attempt to understand it is, optimistically, a comprehension tool, and pessimistically, a coping mechanism. It's how I relate to things. So in conclusion, I would like to apologize in advance for the amount of editing I am almost certain to do to everything I can get my hands on this semester. I assure you, I take absolutely no joy in it.
*Please note that this doesn't mean I think Mr. Wood's "eyesbrow" isn't a good feature. It is his defining feature in all my drawings of him! I just think there are many better ones than just that.
YES I HAD A CRUSH ON MR. WOOD, SHUT UP.
Today I found out that I had, in fact, misunderstood my teacher's use of the word "tangentally", and therefore I would be an idiot to turn this in, but I just liked it so much that I wanted you guys to see it. So, here you are:
1,020+ Words On Why I Write All Over Everything
While I was reading Dr. Davidson’s article, I found myself editing it; I was underlining sentences and whole paragraphs, writing my thoughts in the margins, and occasionally drawing little cartoons to illustrate a point. At some point, a thought occurred to me: While most students my age, or people in general, would hate to come across contradictions and other grammatical errors in a scholarly text, I was loving it, and secretly hoping to stumble across more. This is a habit you’ll probably see a lot of in this class, if the first day is any indication, and it’s a habit that I picked up from being a literary magazine editor in high school.
At Churchill, we had a group called “Phaeton” (which we were told meant “one who sets the world on fire”, but I don’t think anyone ever bothered to check; also, I don’t think anyone outside the group knew how to spell it) whose purpose was to collect poetry and short stories from the rest of the school, and whittle this typically huge mass down to a nice small book of student writing to be sold in the last few weeks of the school year. It was run by my favorite teacher, Mr. Wood, who had a unibrow and thought it was his best feature. It wasn’t.*
There were about twelve editors in total, and I was one of two head editors. Being a head editor didn’t mean a whole lot from the outside, but it meant that Mr. Wood, who had the final say, trusted our input a little more.
Every week, we got a Phaeton Packet, sometimes five pages, sometimes thirty, full of student submissions. Predictably, there was a lot of bad breakup poetry, super-dark, Goth-y, “BLOOD ON THE WALLS” poetry, and, most upsettingly, flat-out plagiarism of popular poems or songs. But hidden somewhere under that were usually one or two gems, written by quiet and clever people.
Mondays were Packet days. Phaeton met to discuss the previous weeks Packet, vote on what moved forward and what was thrown out, and at the end of the meeting everyone got a new Packet. I was always particularly excited about this, because I’d finished whatever book I was reading over the weekend and needed something to do in class besides, you know, class work. As soon as the Packet was in my hands, I’d sit down with my purple pen, quivering in anticipation of not only the great works I was bound to find, but the mountain of sheer terrible I’d have to cross to get to them. A lot of the other editors hated Packet days for this exact reason. I loved them. I loved drawing little cartoons and crossing things out and covering entire pages with the word “NO” in feverish haste (which would sometimes be my review; “I just wrote ‘NO’ all over this one”). I walked into my Phaeton meetings proudly, with my Packet in hand, looking like it had been snatched by a graffiti artist and passed around to all of his friends (who were all, incidentally, also graffiti artists), knowing that I had done my homework.
After a while, this peculiar method of involved reading became hardwired into my way of thinking. My teachers didn’t like it, because it meant that novels they handed out in class always ended up ruined, and my friends didn’t like it, because when they asked to borrow a book, they usually didn’t want to see drawings of fish wearing glasses (for reasons only known to myself) all over certain pages.
Now, however, people seem to find it quirky and endearing. For example, when what I shall refer to as “The Great Twilight Craze of Aught-Eight” was taking place, I picked up a copy of the first book. (This is another thing I do; I try to give every book, and every TV show, a chance. I’ve ended up liking some pretty weird things.) After reading about five pages I realized I wasn’t going to get through it, at least not without hating myself for it, and I was angry. I had defended this book and told people not to knock it until they’d tried it, and now I wasn’t going to get to properly try it.
This wasn’t just another bad book I could give up on. This was now a matter of pride. After a few days, in which I repeatedly picked up my copy of Twilight, only to put it down again, cursing and spitting like a cat, I decided that the only way I was going to make it to the end was to Phaetonize it.
I was surprised at how easy it was to read Twilight when I was able to write incredulous statements in the margins, draw a little lightning bolt and write “*CRACK*”over Edward Cullen’s name every time it was mentioned in full (which was a lot, let me tell you), and replace the words “brilliant surgeon” with “brilliant sturgeon”, and a picture of a giant fish wearing a lab coat. I actually felt sad when the book ended; it had been so much fun. If everyone read Twilight this way, no one could possibly hate Stephenie Meyer.
I had thought that my friends would be suitably appalled to hear that I’d read Twilight. It was, after all, widely regarded as a trashy and awful book. I was right, at least at first: Upon telling my friends what I’d done, their eyes would widen and they would ask, “Why would you DO that?” in a tone that suggested I’d casually told them I’d been eating starfish in my spare time. But they would inevitably ask me how I’d finished it, and when I told them, their expressions would turn from disgust to delight, and they’d ask if they could borrow it. They said it would be the reading equivalent of watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which was, of course, quite flattering).
For me, writing all over everything in an attempt to understand it is, optimistically, a comprehension tool, and pessimistically, a coping mechanism. It's how I relate to things. So in conclusion, I would like to apologize in advance for the amount of editing I am almost certain to do to everything I can get my hands on this semester. I assure you, I take absolutely no joy in it.
*Please note that this doesn't mean I think Mr. Wood's "eyesbrow" isn't a good feature. It is his defining feature in all my drawings of him! I just think there are many better ones than just that.
YES I HAD A CRUSH ON MR. WOOD, SHUT UP.
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