Lindsey Kay's Blog: *! (on Goodreads), page 4

the gifts of the anti-magi

This post has been a long time coming.  This time of the year is always difficult for me, as I feel torn between holiday cheer and resentful drear, obligation and celebration, hope and despair.

I am so very sick of the war on Christmas.

“Oh, good,” some of my Christian friends may be saying at this point, “me too!  Why can’t people just put Christ back into Christmas?”

No, dear friends and readers, that’s not what I mean.  I’m sick of the phrase “put the Christ back in Christmas” and all of the entitlement it entails.  I wish it would all just stop.  Now, I understand that may not sound terribly Christian of me, but hold on.  You may say that your anger and demands are for the sake of Christ, and I wouldn’t want to disparage your motives.  I’m not in your head and I don’t know what you’re thinking.  Yet there’s a painful sticking point in that concession, and it’s one that bears hearing out.  Saying “put the Christ back in Christmas” pretends, even for the space of that second, that Christ is something that can be moved and removed by man.  It implies that Christ’s presence in the holidays for us, as individuals, is somehow dictated by the actions of society.  I don’t like to believe that my experience of Christ this time of year is somehow beholden to the displays in Macy’s windows.  After all, the force of love I am enthralled by is greater than any one man, any one store, any one society.  How weak would I have to be if my sacred observances were somehow shattered by a greeting card?

“Now, it’s bigger than that”, someone inevitably says.  ”The fact that people are no longer observing Christmas as a Christian holiday shows how secular society has become, and this is supposed to be a Christian society.”

Hold. On.  Please.

For one thing, the Christmas smashed all over billboards is hardly Christian.  The Christmas touted in the commercials telling our adorable little tots that this monster truck or that Barbie doll will somehow complete them are anything BUT Christian.  The promise of the holiday that society has started to hold on to is almost in direct contradiction to the Gospel.  The “spirit of Christmas”, as it is sold, is that the holiday itself has some ability to heal.  We’re told, in less than guarded symbolism, that if we buy the right things, eat the right food, invite the right guests, and have the right attitude that we will somehow achieve a transcendent state.  The holiday has become a spiritual act of reaching for sacred healing, but that sacred healing is not tied to God, Christ, or the ideals of Christianity.  It is a secular sacredness, and as such treating the holiday as holy is tantamount to idol worship.

After all, it is jolly ol’ Santa Claus receiving the sacramental cookies and milk, not God.

Christmas, the holy mass of Christ, was once not even Christmas at all.  You’ve got the Germanic Yule and the Roman Saturnalia blended in with Christianity, as the Roman empire expanded and brought in new territories and started to expand the practice of tolerance towards other religions.  In order to lower the amount of infighting between sects and oppression as people traveled from district to district, the Roman calendar morphed to overlap the holidays so that people’s observances were not as conspicuous.  It is ironic, then, that a holiday once tweaked to help avoid oppression and foster inclusiveness has become such a battleground.

Honestly, I don’t think Christmas is the real problem.  I think that Christianity has become the real problem.  In the United States, Christians have a huge entitlement complex that has become an idol above God.  We say that this is a Christian society and anyone that acts against that is out of line, ignoring the fact that we are all equal citizens under the law and Christians are not owed privilege or protection to any greater degree than their neighbors.  We act affronted when anything we deem as untoward is allowed to continue, no matter how innocuous it is.  We bicker and argue and fight constantly, sending our representatives to the evening news and gleefully hacking to bits anyone who dares to disagree with them.

Here, in this season of the Magi, when we celebrate the sacred gifts laid at the feet of Christ, I feel that Christians in America have started praising three other gifts, the gifts of the anti-Magi, laid at the feet of our own ego.  We have swallowed these gifts whole and they threaten to destroy us.  They are entitlement, disdain, and division.  Gifts like that are born of evil and exercised at great personal cost.  But open your eyes, brothers and sisters, and see how we worship them!  Hear the entitlement in the voice of the person telling the Jewish shop owner to put the “Christ” back in “Christmas” when they hand up a Happy Holidays banner.  Hear the disdain in the voice of the mother who, when hearing that a classmate of her child’s wouldn’t come to the Winter Program because they don’t celebrate holidays, says, “Well, isn’t that just what’s wrong with this country?” Look at the division when someone goes on Facebook to beg for tolerance and they are told that they are why Christianity is failing in this country.

I have so many friends who say they can’t stand to go to church, that every time they hear someone is a Christian they instantly feel uncomfortable around them, that they believe in Christ but not the church.

I feel like my soul is just shredded, absolutely shredded, by the holiday season.

Christianity is not owed anything by society.  Nowhere in the Bible does it say, “Because you are Christian, everyone ought to respect you, respect everything you say, and never cause negative consequences for any of your actions.”  In fact, it says quite the opposite.  It tells us not to be surprised when we’re hated and persecuted.  So why are we so surprised?  Because we have idolized our own society.  We idolize the constitution, idolize free speech, idolize the symbolism of our holidays.  We worship those things as sacred and then react like vipers when they are threatened.  Because we blindly believe they should be perfect, we accept nothing less: even when, or perhaps especially when, the evidence all around us says otherwise.

We bear a tragic consequence for that behavior, but society bears one even worse as people turn from love to disdain and hatred.

So in this time of year, as we dream of the Magi traveling by the light of a sacred star, carrying gifts of adoration and penance to a pure and holy infant king, let’s think about the gifts that we ourselves need to offer.  Not the perfect consumerist presents wrapped in expensive wrapping paper and laid down at the altar of a tree whose symbolism we’ve forgotten, but the gifts we offer each other.

Let’s stop being the anti-Magi.

Photo from Daniela Munoz-Santos

time for a time out.

How many arguments end with both people still believing the same things, and just hating each other more?  You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it.  People yell and rage at each other until they run out of steam and then they retreat into their respective corners to lick their wounds.   The inevitable result is that while no one “wins” the argument, their disdain for the other side grows increasingly strong, and the next time the topic arises the furor with which it is debated is only stronger.

Pretty soon, all you have to do is mention the topic and all the sudden you are drowning in a sea of bile, which once expelled leaves everyone exhausted and in pain.

I saw this recently with gay rights.  Someone posted, on Facebook, a fairly innocuous plea for people to show Christ’s love and compassion when discussing the recent outcry over Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty’s comments. Within seconds, what unfolded was not a “he who is without sin may cast the first stone” show of support, but a heated and bloody argument that left the original poster in tears.

“What’s left,” another friend later said, “but the “unfriend” button?”

I have to wonder, whose needs are met by this disturbing trend?  What is really being served?  We often assume, when we retreat to our respective corners, that out there is a world that agrees with our assumptions.  Yet today I’m feeling like it’s far more likely that we are actually alone.

I think we need to take a time out.  I think instead of rushing from our corners like a prize fighter hungry to land the killing blow, we need to take the time to look around us and simply be aware.  Who are we fighting?  Why?

A dear friend of mine said, in the midst of the heated discussions of the past few days, that’s it’s easy to say something isn’t all that bad if it’s not being said about you.  Often the kneejerk response to her quiet plea to be understood was further defensiveness or accusations that she simply took things to personally.

I have to wonder why, never once that I heard or saw, someone didn’t turn to her and ask, “can you help me understand why you’re upset?”

We need to keep our eyes and hearts open.  Instead of viewing every argument as a chance to bury our own hatchets, why aren’t we seeing an argument as a chance to further our understanding of the world around us?

I believe this is doubly, triply, infinitely more true for Christians.  After all, as Christians we act not as ambassadors of our past grudges but ambassadors of the love and grace of God.  When we see an argument, our first response should never be to start drawing lines in the sand and throwing punches.  We should see them as opportunities to express a unique grace and compassion, defending those who are in pain and showing compassion to our enemies.

So why are we still fighting?

Photo by Nasrulekram

On Motherhood in a crisis

The last week has been a whirlwind of stress, pain, exhaustion and moments of absolute clarity.  It all started last Thursday when my husband and I learned that his father had been injured in some sort of accident on the job and had been rushed to the hospital.  We live several states away, so there was immediate panic.  How bad is it?  Is he going to be okay?  Could we get my husband out there if we needed to?  Thanks to the generosity of my parents, my friends, and a handful of random strangers, we were able to raise the funds and airline miles to fly my husband out to be with his family.  As I’m writing this, my father-in-law has yet to regain consciousness, although his eyes sometimes open and his fingers sometimes move, which is better than where things had been.

It is so surreal, being out here while my husband is out there, trying to be the still point in a turning world when the center of gravity seems out of place.

I can’t say I know how hard it has been on my husband.

I do know, to some degree, how hard it has been on my children.  I can’t say how many times in the past week it seemed like the household turned from happiness to panicked chaos in a split second.  One moment we’re talking about our favorite My Little Ponies, the next minute it’s, “what happens if Pappy dies?”  One second it’s plans for the Minecraft server, the next it’s, “what if Pappy stays alive but never wakes up?”

Questions I can’t answer.  I long for the good old days of just having to explain that it is dark earlier because of the way the earth tilts on it’s axis and that the sky looks blue because of how our brain interprets the refraction of light.  That stuff is child’s play compared to explaining how when there’s bleeding inside of the brain, the brain can’t send signals the way it should and…  ugh.

We’re walking through the store and it’s this ghost that haunts us.  I want to lay down and cry, but I can’t.  I have to buy the groceries and clean the fridge and fold the laundry and check the homework and cook the meals, and meanwhile these questions follow me around the house in the irresistible and unignorable form of my children, panicking every time I have to think before answering.  ”Why can’t Pappy talk on the phone?  Will he ever talk on the phone?”  I cook the food, I serve the food.  We sit around the table and try to act like nothing is missing.  ”I don’t like eating at the table without Daddy.  Can we just watch a movie?”

Time for bed.  Time to try to act like we can do this.  Change into pajamas, brushing teeth.  Here come the tears again.  ”I don’t like going to sleep without daddy praying first.”  ”We can try to call daddy.”  ”Daddy is with Pappy.”  And here it comes again.  The kids keep getting out of bed, coming to see what I’m doing.  Wipe the tears quickly before they pop their heads in the room.  Smile.  Keep smiling.  Tuck them back in, again and again.  Be firm but not angry.  You have to sleep, you have to go to school in the morning.  Yes, it’s very sad that daddy isn’t here and we don’t know when Pappy will wake up, but in the meantime we have our lives to live.

Monkeypants keeps me up until midnight.  I sneak a few moments of silence before laying down, wake up before everyone else so that I have a moment to clear my head.  Wake the kids up with tickles and laughter, try to keep the questions at bay.  On the way to school they creep back in.  ”My teacher asked about Pappy, what do I say?”  Smile, say that we’re keeping hope, we’re staying positive, daddy will be back home soon.  ”Will Pappy wake up before daddy comes home?”  We can’t know.  ”What if Pappy doesn’t wake up?”

Whatever happens, we’ll be okay.  We have each other and we love each other.

“Don’t fall down and hit your head until your brain bleeds,” my son says in a very serious voice.

I put my hand over my heart, “I promise to try not to,” I say, “but no matter what happens, you would be okay.  I know you would.”

He shakes his head, “I don’t like the fact that people get hurt and die,” he says.

No one likes that.  Who would?

Another bedtime, this time with less tears.  Another night where I’m up past midnight, putting them in bed again and again and again.  I wonder how little sleep I need to survive.  6 hours a night doesn’t seem like quite enough.  I make coffee in the mornings, I never make coffee.  I smile.  The questions are quieter today.  They aren’t always asked, but I see in their eyes, I see the questions they aren’t asking so I smile, I hold them tight, I speak softly as I check the homework and put out the food.  The questions always come out eventually.  ”How much blood can come out of a brain?  Like, all the blood in the body?”

Gosh, that’s a good question.

“Do they put more blood back in him?  How does that work?”

I need to take more physiology classes.  The two weeks we spent on the brain in Psychology are not enough.  We Google things and talk about them.  ”I hit my head on everything.  It seems stupid to put something as important as a brain in somebody’s head when they might just fall down and break it forever.”

We talk about miracles and people who come out of comas after months or years.

“I don’t want Pappy to be asleep for that long.”

No one does, but Pappy’s job is to sleep and heal and our job is to wait.

Another day, and another.  I find myself randomly nodding off on the couch while Monkeypants plays in the other room.  Wake up!  It’s not over yet.  My job is to stay awake and wait.  And I wonder, how long can I hold off my own questions, my own tears?  How long can I keep showing them how to be brave and keep hope?

8 days in, I realize the truth.  I can do it as long as I have to.  I can do it forever.  As long as their eyes are watching me, I can do whatever is asked of me, because in proving to them that everything will be okay, I prove it to myself.

Duck Dynasty, Exposure, and Godliness.

So, Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame apparently couldn’t stop talking about how sinful being gay is while giving a reporter from GQ a tour of his home.  His subsequent suspension from appearances on A&E created a dual dust-up:  Gay people that are offended that yet another high-profile Christian has made them into a whipping boy, and Christians who scream “free speech” in response to his censure at the hands of the production company.

I had a handful of kneejerk responses to seeing the news.  The first was that I checked on all of my gay friends on Facebook, because if any of them had posted an angry, sad, or bitter retort I wanted to express my condolences for any pain they felt.  The second was to check on all my Christian friends, just in case I felt the need to offer some perspective.  The third was to hunt down the original article in question and read it carefully.  After that, I had to do some thinking.

My feelings on this issue are complex, as my feelings inevitably seem to be.

First, I am tired to my very bones of Christians feeling the need to pick at the sins of society as a whole.  We can’t ever fully understand God or his motivations, but we can look to the Bible and see what examples he gives us.  In the old Testament we see God ordering one of his prophets to marry a prostitute, as this is a metaphor for his love for his people.  The metaphor?  The man loves his wife but she leaves him to pursue her own interests time and time again, only coming back when she is beaten and bruised.  Hm.  Another example I find illuminating is, of course, Christ.  He did talk about sin, but he lived a life that was not focused on it.  His life was focused on compassion.  Then there are the letters of the apostles which of course are filled with admonitions- but they were talking to fellow Christians, and we really honestly cannot use their language as a model for how to speak with unbelievers, so what are we left with?

Looking back at the story of Hosea and the prostitute Gomer, I am continuously struck by the fact that while her sin and abandonment of her vows was an issue, the greater focus was on God’s love for his people and how Hosea’s love of her was a reflection of that.

The story of salvation may involve sin by necessity, but it isn’t the story of sin.

Focusing on sin misses the mark, and that’s where I think that Phil Robertson’s portrayal of Christianity falls short.  You can say that his remarks about how guys ought to dig vaginas were a defense of Christian beliefs, but is that what Christianity boils down to?  Not liking anus?

Given a platform to discuss anything, or to defend the faith, what exactly needs defending?  The right to consider homosexuality a sin, or the right to demonstrate God’s love?

For me, at least, the choice is clear.

Then, when it comes to considering whether or not A&Es censure of Robertson is a condemnation of faith or simply an investment-saving move, I think the truth is equally as clear.  Robertson was given the time with the GQ reporter to further A&Es brand, which is bound up in the Robertson family’s persona.  While that persona involves their Christianity-inspired down-south values, consideration has to be given to the audience at hand.  GQs audience probably isn’t reading a spread on Duck Dynasty to hear about how being gay is bad.  It’s simply bad PR, and from A&Es point of view Robertson’s job was as a brand ambassador, not an ambassador for Christ.

He’s being censured for not doing his job.

This is the problem with mixing God and money.  If you choose God, you aren’t choosing money, and if you choose money you may have to turn on your morals.  If Robertson’s ultimate goal was furthering his version of the gospel, in the end losing his screen time should be a price he is happy to pay for having done that.  If his ultimate goal was money, well, he had the choice to keep his mouth shut.

(Although, honestly, there is a fair argument to be made that furthering God doesn’t necessitate gay-bashing.)

Now, for the issue of free speech:

If Robertson was an atheist and had said that Christianity had no place in American politics and that politicians should be censured if they admit to their personal ethics being influenced by the Bible, would the Christian community be saying his right to free speech is sacrosanct?

Food for thought.

Picture from Jamesjustin

keeping the “mass” out of “Christmas”

A few weeks ago I was joking that I didn’t know how many “War on Christmas” rants I could stomach before something just came unglued in my head.  Well, here we are.

First, I should explain.  Growing up, Christmas was always one of my favorite holidays.  It wasn’t because of the presents.  Many people tell stories of the holiday they got that one thing that they’d been wanting.  The excitement of decorating the Christmas tree, perhaps.  Or the piles of presents and wondering how many were for you.  My earliest memories of Christmas don’t involve a lot of presents.  Like, the year that we got a dishwasher and a radio for Christmas.  I don’t remember our house ever being super decorated, as decorations would cost money we didn’t have.  We’d paint the Christmas tree on the window, or pull branches off the pine tree in the back yard.  Christmas was a very simple time, but it was the time that no one had to go to school.  It was one of few times that my mother was really around all day long.  We’d either go spend the holiday with family in Indiana, or grandma and grandpa would come and be around our house to help with our kids all day.  There would be days on end of board games and baking, we’d eat cookies all day long and stay up too late.  I’d be able to check out as many books from the library as I wanted and read, read, read, read, read.

For me Christmas has always been about celebrating family, not getting crap.

But I look at the holiday these days, and all I see is, “BUY!  BUY!  BUY!”  Christmas is about guilt, when other people buy me things and I’m not in a position to reciprocate.  It’s about obligation, when you have to go to parties with people you don’t really like and pretend to like them.  It’s about the kids being told 24/7 by the TV and their friends that they should get more, more, more, more, more.  In modern days, I often feel, like my brilliant friend Tom, that there are two Christmases.  There’s the overwrought holiday of “Christmas” that is emblazoned all over the consumer society, one in which people are torn in a million directions and feel the constant panic of insufficiency.  It is the guilt riddled holiday that will never, could never, be what it is made to represent.  The house will never be decorated enough, the hostess gifts never chiq enough, the presents never in great enough number, the feeling never true enough, the togetherness never together enough, the spread never going far enough…  It is the crowning glory of the symbolism having come to obliterate the meaning.  It symbolizes all we crave but can never obtain.  And then there is the simple, understated Xmas, in which all of the trappings and glories of the holiday are stripped away, and all that is left is a simple night where people reach out to touch each other, reach out to honor each other, and remember that beneath all of the layers of meaning and argument and need, there is something very simple that needs to be remembered.

Our humanity.

See, Christmas was once a sacred holiday.  It was the mass of Christ’s birth, the symbol of hope and salvation for a world that was fractured and torn apart.  The blending of the pagan societies that Rome enveloped with the ministrations of the Holy Mother Church.  It symbolizes the hope of unity, and the celebration, even for a night, that though we all bring our own traditions to the table we can share them in a way that is beautiful.

If we’re honest, it’s not hard to see that consumerism has driven Christ out of Christmas.  Christ is overwhelmed by jolly red Santas and reindeer and snowmen and sales ads.  Christ, humble as he may be in his manger, is just a dot on the lawn compared to the Christmas lights and fringe and tinsel that make our homes, our lawns, our conspicuous consumption, the real star of the show.

And honestly, I feel that Christ is cheapened by being attached to a holiday that is so full of excess.   Isn’t a little sacrilegious to claim that we are doing any of this in his name?

But even so, what I miss from Christmas isn’t the Christ, as he is an ever present fixture in my life and I don’t need a single day to remind me of his presence, it’s the mass.  It’s the holy night.  It’s the coming together around the dying embers of a fire to keep hope that we will survive to another spring.  It’s sitting around the oven with the family, late at night when we’d normally all be in bed, watching my mother baking and realizing that we were still here, we’d weathered the first part of the year and we’d make it through, no matter how bad the times got.

We may not have toys, we may not have stuff, but we survived.

And there is a sacred sweetness in those memories that is just obliterated by the holiday.

There is a simple beauty there that cannot survive in the midst of the profanity of the holiday screaming at me from hundreds of billboards and store fronts, telling me what I need to feel happy.

The reason that Christmas isn’t sacred anymore isn’t about the name, or the “war”, or the whatever.  It is that nothing remains sacred once its existence depends on money changing hands, just as sex isn’t sacred when you’re buying it.  It’s just a transaction, then, and you can’t transact Christ.

This stupid “war on Christmas” turns Christ into a whore, and it takes the “mass” as well and trades it for consumption, as if it is what storefronts say that dictates the extent to which Jesus belongs to the holiday.  At the end of the day, all you are left with is the war.

All you are left with is your own dissatisfaction.

All you are left with is yourself.

All you are left with is the ironic realization that you cannot buy love, and God is love, and you can buy all the symbolism you want- but it will never,

Ever,

Ever,

Ever,

Ever be enough.

 

Photocredit: RVwithTito

Review: Eleanor & Park (JUST READ IT RIGHT NOW.)

If you haven’t read Eleanor & Park, don’t even read this review.  Go read the book.  NOW.  Don’t waste another second of your bleak and loveless life reading my blog when you could have this book on your Kindle within seconds.  But, if you insist (or you’ve read the book), here you go:

Writing a review for this book has been incredibly difficult for me. My first review for it was one word. Just, “Eff.” Then I expanded it to three words, “Holy Effing Eff.” Then I thought really long and hard about it, and decided that this book deserved many, many, many more words.

See, here’s the thing: poverty is very hard to honestly describe. While I was still a supervisor for a homeless shelter, I often looked for books that I thought I could give to our residents to help them pass the painfully long hours of the day, and maybe help them think about their lives at the same time. This was doubly true for the teens, who were hit with the double whammy of being homeless as well as often being years behind in reading. I can still remember the time that I allowed myself to be roped into reading the Twilight Saga so that I could talk books with one of them.

Ye Gods.

I cannot say, with words at least, how much I wish this book had existed then.

Let me say again that poverty is so painfully difficult to describe with any honesty, without sounding psychotic or like you are exaggerating. It’s even harder to explain the complex emotions that go along with poverty, or the way that they shape who you are and change you. To respond to the question, “why do you always seem angry?” with “because I’m poor” sounds crass. To respond to the girls in the locker room teasing your hair for being crap with, “it’s because I’m poor” seems ridiculous. To explain the fact that your clothes don’t fit and you always look weird with, “well, we’ve talked about how poor I am” is just so. Intensely. Lame. No one gets it unless they’ve washed their clothes by hand in cold water using dish soap, or rubbed vanilla behind their ears to cover the smell of lack-of-soap. But Rainbow Rowell paints this incredibly vivid picture of how poverty shapes not just Eleanor’s world but Eleanor as a character, and it is perfect. I mean, this book is the effing Statue of David of books. Rowell is the effing Michelangelo of writers.

I have to admit I’m just the slightest bit bitter, because if I ever publish anything I know it will not hold a candle to the absolute priceless beauty of this story. God help me. I cannot imagine how to do it better.

But back to the story itself. Eleanor is a girl living in abject poverty, having just moved back in with the mother who has lost her sense of self and the uncle who drinks away all the money needed to keep the kids in clothes with bellies full. Top that off with being the new girl in school, and you’ve got a pretty toxic situation that all of the kids back at the shelter know all too cruelly well. But Eleanor’s saving grace might just be the boy who reluctantly lets her sit next to him on the bus, the cool, stable, upper-middle class Park. Their unlikely friendship turns into a bittersweet teen romance which turns so many stereotypes on their heads.

I don’t want to spoil a second of the story, but let’s just say that my favorite moment is the second best Star Wars reference in literature. (The best still belongs to the fabulous Gae Polisner.) This book made me laugh and cry like an idiot at work, and I didn’t even mind because if anyone had asked me what was up I could’ve shoved the book on them in giggly tearful fangirl glory and sat on them until they read it so we could talk about how absolutely perfect it is.

No, really. I’m a college student and a mother of three and work part time and all my money is the most precious money in the world, but I will spend that precious money on spare copies of this book because the next time a student at work tells me that no one really understands what it’s like to be poor and just trying to make your life worth living, and they just want to give up hope, I will give them this book and say, “someone gets it.”

Someone gets it.

Sometimes, that is priceless.

Sometimes, it’s all you need.

This book could not be more highly recommended. Five big fat smacks-you-in-the-feels-and-you-love it stars, but 5 isn’t enough.

Musings on everything about myself I don’t like.

This morning I had my first experience of “co-teaching” a class.  I taught a reading lesson to an eighth grade literacy class, and it was a ton of fun.  For the most part, it went great.  I didn’t bungle anything irreparably, the students seemed to react well to me, the room had a great energy and I didn’t find the “classroom management” (I.E, communicating expectations and enforcing consequences) portion of the day as difficult as I imagined.  Yet, there were a few things that were unexpected and unpleasant.  One was that my knee-jerk response to aggression is to smile or laugh.  That’s fine when you are watching TV or you can easily check out of a situation, but chuckling when one 14 year old boy smacks another 14 year old boy on the back of a head with a pencil when you are teaching a class is like saying, “EVERYONE GO CRAZY, NO RULES HERE, ‘KAY?”  Fortunately the situation was recovered quickly (paraphrased:  the dismissal bell rang) but it was definitely a learning experience.  Plus, it’s given me a chance to think about the parts of my personality that are less conducive to being an instructor.

I hate meeting new people.  I’m bad with names, I never know what an appropriate subject of conversation is, and my first thought on shaking hands with anyone new is “OMG GERMS” followed by “OMG NEW PERSON WHAT IS YOUR NAME I FORGOT” followed by “OMG AM I SHAKING HANDS RIGHT?” which inevitably leads to me blushing, mispronouncing my own name, or needing a stiff drink.  This is not exactly a great situation to be in when you’re going to meet 120 new people in a day and have to teach ALL OF THEM IN A CLASS.  Pretty sure that any school I teach at will object to me using a Borg numbering pattern to name my students.  ”Hello student 5 of Language Arts Block One, that was an inefficient and ineffective approach to the essay task…”
Things like passing people in the hallway makes me break out in a sweat.  Seriously.  I start wondering if I’m walking normally, I worry that I may walk to close to them or them to me, I wonder if they are going to engage me in a conversation, I wonder if my smile seems fake, I wonder if this is a “hello, nice morning” situation or I should say nothing…  SCHOOL HALLWAYS ARE FULL OF PEOPLE.
No, really, I often worry that I don’t walk like a normal person.  I worry that I stand weird.  I worry that I sit weird.  I worry that I have a funny look on my face and don’t know it, I’m almost constantly sure that my hair is WRONG.
I’m in constant chaos with my assertive nature fighting my desire to never hurt anyone.   I find myself being strict and then regretting it, or being gentle and then regretting not being strict.  I am so incredibly paranoid about how to manage a classroom that is safe and orderly, and wondering how to walk the tightrope between the student’s needs (for structure as well as autonomy) and my own need (to be able to teach effectively).
Plus, what if I accidentally cuss?  I’ll probably cuss.  And knowing me, it’ll be a hell of a curse word.
I’m constantly going on rabbit trails in my mind that even my husband can’t follow. 6 hours of instruction a day for five days a week for most of a year = a whole lot of confusing innocent children with my Leporidaeian mind.  Sigh.
I often don’t like other people’s kids.  I know, that’s horrible.  It’s absolutely awful.  But I’ve been in the room with 7 year olds who I have a hard time seeing as people because in my mind they are just germ-riddled TV channel changing machines with no independent thought.  (I KNOW, THAT’S AWFUL OF ME.)  This problem often gets worse as kids age until they get about to 16 or 17 and have been humiliated enough to show some depth of rational thought (I KNOW I AM A BAD PERSON) so what if I’m teaching a bunch of empty headed kids who I have nothing but disdain for?  (I NEED TO SHUT UP OH GOD SAVE ME FROM MYSELF…)
I pretend to be this open-minded person who will debate about anything and always sees every side of an issue.  That’s who I want to be, and who I manage to be at times.  But then there are these other times where someone disagrees with me and all I want to do is shake their shoulders and say, “is there a brain in there?  How obvious is the right answer here?”  I’ve been lucky enough that in one employment my boss didn’t mind me openly contradicting him, and in my other job having very little to disagree about (there are only so many ways to pass out meds and clean toilets), and in my current position agreeing with my supervisor in everything, but the education system is FULL of debate, and I, um, debate much better on the internet than in real life.

Of course all of this is mediated, in large degree, by the fact that teaching comes naturally to me and language comes naturally to me and all of the parts of the job that have to do with teaching and language make me feel more alive than pretty much anything in the world other than raising my children and tolerating (er, choosing (er, loving?)) my husband.  But, seriously…. beneath this intelligent, put together, adultish veneer I’m still a paranoid antisocial awkward kid who hides in the bushes to read because everyone else in the world is awful.

And, my God, walking into a school makes that part of me SCREAM with agony.

I’ve still got a year to find a good therapist before I’m doing this full time….  hm…

Passing for Middle Class

After  my last post, a friend sent me a link to this piece on the Huffington Post, in which a woman so eloquently explains some of the reason why poor people make “bad” choices and how hard it is to pass for middle class.  I can say from my own experience that the mentality that Linda Tirado writes about in that article is precisely what plagues so many families that live on the edge of homelessness.  The biggest barrier for many of them, aside from the lack of money, was the fact that they were perceived of as poor.

Oh, come on, you might say.  ”Lindsey, they were homeless!  What else were they supposed to be perceived as?”

I can remember one time where a guest of ours was on the phone talking to a collection agency.  With the snap of a finger the way she was sitting in her chair changed.  Her voice became silky-smooth and her diction even changed.  She sounded perfectly middle class.  She thanked the collection officer profusely for his patience and understanding while she worked out her “momentary problems” and promised to get back in touch.  After she hung up the phone, her boyfriend asked her how it went and she said, “We’re never paying that f&^%ing moron.”

But, for just long enough to get the collection agency off her back, she’d passed for middle class.  I’d talk more to her later about why exactly she didn’t work harder to look and talk the way middle class people did if she clearly understood how it worked.  She’d laugh it off and say that it wouldn’t make a difference in the long run.  ”I can pretend to get what I need,” she said, “but I don’t want that to be who I am.”

I write about that story because it’s something that niggles in the back of my mind.  It’s one thing for me to walk and talk middle class while being poor, because my family is middle class and poverty for me is a transitional period.  We weren’t always this poor, and we won’t always be.  We’re recession-poor.  For other people, who were born poor and feel that they will die for, passing for middle class feels more like a betrayal.  It is, to put it simply, pretending to be something that society continually tells you that you are not.

I had a weird moment the other day. I was closing the gate behind me after driving into my drive.  Instead of wearing the ripped jeans, battered sneakers, and badly stained t-shirts that I normally wear around the house, I was wearing my work slacks, my hair was pinned up, my makeup was on and my school ID badge was pinned to my tie.  My neighbor was out working on his car.  Normally I get a “nice day” or “what’s going on?” from him, but in that moment he said, “g’day, ma’am”, and I had to blush.  He blushed too, and said, “you’re like professional, it’s a reflex.”

Right, because I deserve deference in the moment I pass for middle class, instead of just being the girl next door who shares gardening advice and whose kids constantly kick their ball into his yard.  I felt more respected by him when he was joking about my nice melons.

Respect for the middle class is so deeply engraved into the way that people in poverty think.  It’s a respect for the persona, the clothes, the air of competency which you never feel you can pull off when you’re changing your own oil or struggling to just, you know, get through another bitter day.

And the backhand of the respect for the middle class, of course, is the fact that when you are in poverty you feel beholden, like a burden, less than.  Like a dog with it’s tail between it’s legs you “ma’am” the world and then hope to go unnoticed, because the thought of another patent-leather loafer kicking you in the face is never far away.  You feel loyalty to everyone else who runs in your pack and you feel as if you are betraying everything, even your own morals, by being anything else.

Desire to make it is always bitterly paired with resentment, and this clinging need to want to remain exactly as you are and still be loved.

Poor people lack integrity?

Often times, I’ll look back on my day  of work and feel like I’m just so insanely lucky to have my job.  But sometimes, just sometimes, I have more of a “WTF?!?!” feeling about my job.  Today is a “WTF, JOB” day, but only because of one writer.  She had a sort of rambling-incoherent essay about integrity and society which she had worked really hard to make more organized.  We tip-toed through it talking about the places where she didn’t have enough evidence to stake her claims and how she could have more of a central focus.  Inasmuch as that is concerned, she wasn’t so different from any other student.

No, what turned my stomach was in her conclusion, where she was talking about how society seems to reward bad behavior, and she threw in an aside about how lazy people are rewarded with food stamps and WIC.  Her teacher had written, in the margin, “lazy children and babies?”, a sentiment which I reflexively backed.  The student responded that she wasn’t really sure why her teacher had made that comment, and then flipped the paper over to show me a bit of a rant that said teacher had made about the working poor, which asked rather bluntly, “if a single mom works two part time jobs and still needs WIC & food stamps, how many jobs should she get?”

So the student and I talked briefly about the plight of the working poor, and I told her that if she wanted to make the argument that society rewards bad behavior she’d have to get another example, “if not because you understand what I’m saying, because your teacher clearly doesn’t think your argument is sound.”

I asked her if she thought that bankers who sold toxic mortgages being rewarded with cushy early retirement deals while the government bailed out their companies was a good example of what she meant.

“WHAT?”

I explained again.  ”Do you think that they acted without integrity and were rewarded?”

The student blinked slowly.  ”I don’t know.  What are you even talking about?  That’s not like, you know, a real thing that happened.”

I could hear my pulse pounding in my ears.  ”Yes, yes it is.  Please google ‘toxic mortgage’ and read the news articles that come up.  It happened a few years ago but we still feel the effects of it today.  You’re younger than me, but you were old enough to be paying attention to the news during the recession…”

“It wasn’t, like, a real recession.”

“My family moved from Indiana to Yakima because there were no jobs.  Like, no jobs.  There was a place that was hiring twenty people and three thousand people applied.  If that isn’t a real recession, I don’t know what is.”

“But it was like not the bankers fault,” the girl said, “if it really was…”

“Please, just look it up,” I said, thinking that it sure as hell wasn’t the fault of babies on WIC.

But it left me feeling incredibly unsettled, this reflexive hatred towards poor people.  Only slightly less unsettling was the defensive trust of the rich.  Yet, what stuck with me was the instinctive way that she equated being poor with having no integrity, without flinching, assuming without having anything to base her argument on that anyone reading it would agree.  As if the final nail in the coffin when arguing that today’s society has lost its moral compass would be the fact that we feed babies and children whose parents cannot get by.

I don’t know, perhaps this is another sign of my own biases getting in the way of my better judgment, as I almost instantly wanted to tap out of the consultation and take up smoking just to burn off the stress.  Yet I cannot, even now, nine hours later, easily shake the sourness in my stomach and get on with life.  How is it that there is an entire population of our country that equate poverty with sin just as simply as I equate the sky with the color blue?  Yet, there is evidence that the sky is blue every day.

What, exactly, is the evidence that poor people are bad?

Where does that message even come from?

I would think that if you were going to write a essay about the duplicitous nature of our society, the better argument would be the fact that our government is more prone to cut food stamps than they are to cut subsidies to corporations, and that human life holds less sacredness than capitalism.

Yet, from the look in that girl’s eyes, I’m the one who isn’t really in touch with reality.

Heh.

Honestly, I’m not sure that reality is something I want to get my hands on these days.

Book Review: Princess Reads Judy Moody

Sometimes I read books with Princess and then don’t know how to review them afterwards.  This is a bit of an experiment because Princess wants to review books like her godmother Kelly.

Princess says,

All the time, she said “I ate a shark”!  But that funny!  All the chapter are funny!  The story it about Judy.  I see Judy being grumpy.  Sometime girl can feel grumpy!  Right?  I knew to get it from my library.  From school.  And I think it just a happy story!  But it is a kind of funny story.  I know that it also some not funny.  Some might be SILLY!  When they thinking about what it is, it different.  But I fine!  I think it still right.  I think I am fine with that book.

—  This is Lindsey again.  Princess saw this book at the library and had to read it, right away!  She started reading it as we were walking to the car, and her nose stayed buried through the car ride, picking up her sister from day care, back home, unloading the car, and until the book was finished.  (Complete with three times of me going out to the car and telling her to PLEASE come in before she froze to death, because she was sitting in the car in the wind with the door open, oblivious to her surroundings.)  She kept reading for 2 hours straight, which is quite a feat for a 9 year old kiddo.  I haven’t read the book myself, so I can’t really speak to what is in it, but Princess said that she understood the book because sometimes SHE is cranky so it was nice to read about a girl who could be silly when she was cranky.  Alrighty then!

This book kept Princess happy and reading, she seemed able to understand the story, and she was excited to talk about it after she was done.  I give it 5 out of 5 buried noses.