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| At some point, America will realize it is making a vast mistake with its education system. When it produces a generation of individuals who do not know what the initials FDR stand for, but rattle off the tested organizational patterns of non-fiction texts...that'll be the day that the government realizes that it has no qualified applicants for a high-profile job. But by golly! They had passed all their tests in middle school and high school! What on earth went wrong? But they had an IEP. Well, that excuses everything then! Or a 504 plan! Yes, why certainly! Have a career flying a fighter jet, even though you can't see. You couldn't pass the test why? Because we didn't give you enough time?! Well, have your mother write us a note. No one can say "no" to that. But did you study? And why not? Because of FOOTBALL?! Oh, that was our fault, scheduling the most career-determining exam on the day right after football practice. Have your mother write the note anyhow. It doesn't really matter. The law says we have to accommodate you, give you the benefit of the doubt. After all, some combination of life, mother nature, and genetics has been unkind to you. It's not YOUR fault you're legally blind. Here, have this job as a pity-prize. You can do anything we put your mind to. Scared yet? I have begun to fall down a rabbit hole known as dating. The concept of "dating" means quite a different thing to our generation than it did to our parents', and furthmore means something entirely different than it did to the high school version of ourselves. Thus, my favorite Grey's quote du jour is "Intimacy is a four syllable word for "Here are my heart and soul - please grind them into hamburger and enjoy." At what point are the risks worth the gain? the conservative in me ponders. I was fine before. I lived here, with no one to answer to, and I was ok. What made me give that up? The coolest thing has begun to happen in my Spanish classes. First of all, it's my favorite time of year, because they've started to get daring with the language. But also, I've started playing music during tests. Lo and behold, they've learned to like it, despite its lack of lyrics. But...what have I done to get this feeling in my gut?
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| I remember the spring in the same way that some people remember how to drive a stick. I remember that anxiously normal feeling of wanting to get under way with something, the breeze that feels somehow out of sync with reality. I remember a breeze that is neither too hot nor too cold for the air it's pushing aside - a breeze that just is. It feels so normal, but so estranged. I remember feeling on the cusp of something great, but not recognizing what it was until it was gone. I remember the darkness. I remember the darkness in such a way that still frightens me - still robs me of my security. My Maryland-Pennsylvania bubble is what disappears everytime I see myself in that darkness. I remember being so enveloped in darkness that I couldn't see the well-traveled path that lay ahead of me. I remember the darkness so consuming that I couldn't wait to be out of it. I remember a darkness so obstinate that a moon couldn't penetrate it, and remind me that I was there. I remember the music swelling in the heat. I remember the exact shirts and songs, and never dreaming that I'd long for this with such vivid memory. I remember the sounds blending, blessing each other with a hint of companionship. I remember the breeze swelling, pushing its way into that room, promising a full-circle transformation. | | |
| It's a sign of the times when I notice that I couldn't be bothered to take a pen in one hand and a paper in front of me and force the two to interact. I need technology. Sad. It's a sign of the times when my biggest fear (almost) about bills and whatnot is not having internet for an extended period of time because that is how I pay my bills. It's my form of connectedness to the rest of the world. It's my escape and reconciliation for not asking myself a thousand times a day "What am I doing here?!" I miss writing. One of my RLA kids asked me today if I ever wrote anything. Nothing substantial, I replied. What does substantial mean? he asked. I shook my head. I like the idea of Christmas this year. Not really sure why, but I do. Maybe because I am very much in control of it all - my shopping done, my relatives coming to me this year, my house decorated. I like the idea of having ownership of these things. We are in the chapter in Spanish that teaches the verb tener. Tener, for those who don't know, means to have. But they use it in more ways than just to express ownership. Los hispanohablantes use it to express age ("I have twenty-four years"). If you don't profess your age, do you not have that distinct number of years? Is it each person's publicly private form of acceptance or denial? I joined my church a few weeks ago. I had to attend classes, in which Pastor Jenny told us all about Methodism. We analyzed the apostles' creed. I like saying it in Spanish better. The word "creo" means "I believe," but it seems to carry more weight because it sounds like "creed." A creed is a formal statement of religious belief, a confession of faith. Formal. Not just two blind words thrown about in daily conversation. Being with more extended family than I cared to be with has made me realize that I do not miss high school. I don't even really think I miss college. I might miss choir. But that's all. Looking back on it, the four years I was at Ship aren't my best years. I was too busy trying to decide who I wanted to be to have any recognition for what was going on around me. And the scary part is, I was more "me" there than I ever had been. What does that say about me? I could blame it all on circumstance, or on things out of my control, on my own darkness hidden in a Christian glow, on my own unwillingness to admit that I'm less than perfect, on my inability to say that I am alone, but it would be a lie. This is and was who I am: solitary, flawed, lazy, intelligent, needy - a hideous combination. There comes a certain point in your life where you have to settle down, in more ways than one. All the "ways" that I tried to be before now mean nothing if my spirit - who I am deep in the darkest parts of me, the parts I'm not sure I'm ready to let others see - won't allow compatibility. It's the true meaning of fake. Is it considered fake if you refuse to live up to what God made you to be? If you aren't allowing yourself to do the things God intended for you...is that the same as pretending to be something else? | | |
| Before I get to what I was actually going to write about, let's take a step back and really read the title. For starters, when I Google-d this phrase to verify that "self-evident" was actually a hyphenated word, I discovered that Jefferson originally wanted the "truths" to be "sacred and undeniable." Is it just me, or does that make more sense than "self-evident?" "Self-evident" screams to me "obvious" - not needing much interpretation or thought because it manifests itself. "Sacred and undeniable." Holy, important, unable to be erased, well-known. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not at the top of my list for obvious things within a person's life. Liberty. Ha! If an alien (extra-terrestrial or otherwise) took this for face value, he'd think we did whatever we pleased ALL the time, with no regard for others' or the concept of space or time or necessity. Life. HA! I just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible, (excellent, by the way) and one of the characters in it remarks that she felt funny about the Hippocratic Oath because she did not feel that anyone came into the world with a certificate of perfect health and the promise of old age. Sacred and undeniable. Hindsight is 20/20, especially since I wasn't there when the Declaration of Independence was written. MY chief sacred and undeniable truth of the moment is that I miss my neuroses. In twenty-four hours time, I have awakened my inner normalcy, and took off my cloak of silliness and true self to reveal that I can act mature, normal, and dull. It upsets me. And without her, Becca's room looks ridiculous and it's beige now, instead of blue. Not that I don't like Nicole (who is my eleventh roommate since starting college), but I can tell already, my neuroses won't be appreciated by her. See, I had a whole list of things to talk about before all this self-evident talk. In a few days I'm going to the beach with the girls, then home to work at camp for a week, then back for a whirlwind acclamation to life with a new roommate (is she still considered a roommate if we don't share a room?) and a week of teacher-ness. I had hoped to get to my classroom before then, but it may or may not happen. But even so, I feel a thousand times better prepared this year than last. If nothing else, I have a better concept of how to regard thirteen-year-olds. I went in not knowing word one about what they needed to hear in the beginning of the year, or how to relate to them. To treat them equally as human beings, but not as equal human beings with myself. Confidence is the differentiation there. I was new to the school and to the profession and for that matter, an entire way of life as an adult, and they were new to the eighth grade. We were too equal. I see one of them about once a week. Of course, a different one each time. The expression on their faces is always the same. Holy crap, Srta. Pugh wears tank tops from Old Navy, flip-flops, and buys the same cereal that we do. OMG, maybe she hasn't seen me. But of course, I have, because my guard is put up twice as strong because I am the newcomer to the area. I am the one not looking my age, and without a personal life to hide behind. I am hoping against all hope that they haven't seen me. The new-teachers' mantra remains: Never let 'em see you sweat. On a closing note, Broadway addicts should go to Playbillradio.com. It's a beautiful thing. | | |
| We have cats. By "we" I mean my current roommate and I, and by "have" I mean that we acquire them every now and again in our back yard, from neighboring back yards. Yes, I have a back yard, and I have neighbors. Since the last time I've updated, I moved to Mount Airy, to what my mother calls a "cute" townhouse. To me, it's a palace. Compared to the last place (cough "hole-in-the-wall" cough) it's a palace. I have my own HUGE bedroom and bathroom, a real living room and kitchen, and my favorite part: a basement with a washer and dryer. Granted, most of these things belong to my landlord, but I still wake up wondering if I should pinch myself. I walk around waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think it just did. You see, my current roommate, another teacher at my school, decided she was going to tranfer and move, which disappoints me endlessly. And already, there's another girl waiting in the wings. Well, but should I be surprised?! In the words of Chandler, this place is a "friggin' steal!" But she's like, 28 or something! Holy Crap! What if she's more adult than I am? What if she's really on the 30 end of her 20s, whereas I am still on the 20 end? What if she doesn't find my neuroses charming? What if her furniture is too big for the living room? But we have cats. In other news, I am spending my very first summer vacation as a contracted teacher in a carefully-concocted mix of the following: summer course work, summer school with 3 darling middle school children, reading (I've termed this "Project Literacy," in hopes that I'll want to delve further into books with my recent certification in middle school English), watching rented movies from Netflix, scrapbooking, and naps. Oh yes, and I am becoming quite the housewife. Is it considered "housewife" if you are neither the owner of the house or a wife to anyone? I'm ok with these two details, especially (and surprisingly) since in the recent weekends, I know six couples who have wed (she says while swallowing carefully disguised panic). I go through waves where I crave solitude. This is not one of them. "Get out of the bitter barn and play in the hay!" Bring on the hay. Come visit! | | |
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