Essay: Informational phoning rules reset.

Rules reset, phone manners.

Here’s an actual transcription of a phone call I received at work last week.

Me:  [Name of School], this is Patricia

Caller:  Uh, is this the school located at [gave address of school]?

Me: Yes it is.

Caller:  Are you gonna move any time soon?

Me:  We have our lease for another few years, but we have no plans to move in the future.

Caller:  Oh.

Me: Why do you ask?

Caller:  Oh.  Uh.  I’m opening a Medical Marijuana store and you guys are getting in the way of my plans.

Me:  Ah.  Well, you should plan on us being here for the foreseeable future.

Caller:  Okay. [Hangs up]

I chuckled, because I don’t get calls from medical marijuana dealers every day, but I also think this random interchange provides a great framework for shoring up our phone manners.  I’ve noticed they have diminished over the last decade or so, so let’s do a reboot.

1.  Figure out what you are calling for.

This seems rather obvious, but most people don’t do it.  I get a lot of random opening questions that aren’t quite heading us in the right direction to get the information the callers are looking for.  Then I have to play a hit-and-miss game of questions to pinpoint the information the caller is looking for.  In this case, Mr. Medical Marijuana wanted to know if he could hold off opening his business and still be in the location he had chosen because maybe the school had plans to move.  But yet, he starts by asking me to identify the school and location.

2. Begin with your name (first AND last) and perhaps title.

I know that many phone-type devices have ways to display who is calling, but this is not yet a universal thing.  I don’t have this for my phone at work.  When you begin your call with your name and title, it helps the person you are calling slot you into the correct part of her brain so she can help you.  In this gentleman’s case, I wasn’t sure if I was talking to a parent who needed the address, a visitor to the school or some other random thing.  If he had begun with something along the lines of, “Hello, my name is Steve Ganja of Ganja’s Buds and I have a question about your school,” then I would have been able to slot him into “outsider with random question” category and proceeded accordingly.

It’s also much friendlier to begin with your name.  I have quite a few calls from grandparents that begin with, “When’s Spring Break?” and when I tell them, they say thank you and then disconnect.  It feels rather abrupt and leaves me feeling slightly used.  And I’ve said it before, but please use both names.  All you Allisons and Jennifers and Dinas and Hilarys, there are multiples of you and I never know which one I am talking to.  I have to guess.  Throw on a last name and I’m golden.

3. State your question quickly and concisely.

In Steve Ganja’s case, he maybe could have said something along the lines of, “I’m opening a Medical Marijuana business and have just learned that your school is within 1000 feet of my preferred location, which means I can’t sell there.  But I’m wondering if you have any plans to move in the near future.”  See how clean and complete that is? 

4.  When you have what you need, be sure to end the call politely.

A “hey, thanks” is always welcome.  Kind wishes for the day are good too. 

If everyone would take these steps, phone conversation would be vaulted into pleasant interchanges during the day, rather than bemusing ones.

Essay: What I need to be creative.

It’s spring break and I have finally started sewing the two dresses I originally planned to have finished for the first day of school.  The first day of school plan didn’t happen, and I assumed that after the big exhaustion that is September, I would have them finished by the end of October, at the latest.  As you can see, that didn’t come to pass. In the months since I completed my last sewing project—the uniform aprons—I’ve had no energy to put in the direction of sewing.  My creative spark has been drained.  That got me thinking about what I need to be creative.

There are a few areas in my life that I see as my creative realms:  sewing, writing and gardening.  I think that this last fall/winter/spring, writing has really sucked up all of my creative allotment, leaving no room for sewing or gardening.  I’d like to achieve more of a balance among the three, but not at the expense of the amount of writing I’ve been doing.  It sounds like a tall order.  But here’s what I need to be creative at all.

A regular routine.  I first learned the power of a routine from Flylady (www.flylady.net) and her lessons have been reinforced by HabitRPG.  (habitrpg.com).*  Both of those philosophies encourage me to do things regularly, before they become overwhelming.  When I was writing the first draft of the novel I’m working on, I felt like writing 500 words per day was a pace I could keep up and so my routine was that every day I had to write at least 500 words.  If I wrote more, that was fine, but if I missed a day, there was no writing 1000 words the next day to make up for it.  Each day gave me one chance to do my daily writing, so I had to make the most of it.  Most days I enjoyed the writing, so I didn’t need to have a hard and fast time to write, but I did try to do it “first,” either first thing in the morning—writing usurped exercise when I realized that I wasn’t motivated to go out in the cold and exercise—or first thing when I sat down at my computer for the evening.

The details of my life need to be under control.  This was also learned from Flylady and is supported by HabitRPG.  The dishes must be dealt with, the house must meet a minimal clean state, my finances have to be in order and I have to have adequate food and regular exercise.  If those things have spiraled out of control that energy tends to take over and kill any creative energy.  When things have gone undone for too long, I procrastinate more, avoiding both the undone task and the fun creative thing I would rather be doing.  I can get very stuck this way, and HabitRPG’s daily tasks really do a good job keeping me from falling into that black hole.

I can’t be obsessed with anything.  A short list of things I’ve been obsessed with in the past year:  The TV show Veronica Mars, Just One Day/Just One Year by Gayle Forman.  Every book by Gayle Forman.  The TV show Friday Night Lights.  Channing Tatum.  This is an area I don’t really feel like I have much control over, which disturbs me.  We don’t have cable, because it’s expensive and I would rather not be swept up in TV.  But I do get entire seasons of TV series from the library and am not very good at putting the brakes on them when I’m enjoying the narrative.  The same goes for books.  Sometimes I’m successful in setting limits, but not as often as I would like.  When I put a lot of energy into whatever I’m obsessed with, not only do I reduce the time I can be creative, I also tend to skip those all-important details which leads me down a very bad path.  I’ve got the first season of the New Girl arriving soon, and I hope I can keep things under control.

Easy accessibility.  I don’t like to spend a lot of time getting ready to be creative, I just want to jump in and do it.  With writing, it’s pretty easy, because I just turn on the computer and go.  With gardening, it can be more difficult because the three minutes it would take me to get out the tools for the day can be enough of a block that I can’t make myself start.  Sewing is even more formidable because six different things must be retrieved before beginning, then put away when I’m done.  For gardening, I’ve taken to leaving out the three most essential things I need.  With sewing, I try to make a ritual of the setup and break down.  Last spring I fell into a pattern of getting materials out on Friday after school and putting them back Sunday afternoon and that was helpful.  It wasn’t something I could do after summer, so I guess I need to refigure how I approach that.

Time.  If it’s something I’ve not done before I need a lot of time.  And it’s not even time to do the thing, what I need is vast amounts of time to roll the thing around in my head before I even begin.  I see this a lot with sewing.  If I have a complicated pattern, I need to give myself the space to read the directions and then walk away for a few hours or even a day or two.  This can be a problem when weekends are packed full of activities that aren’t sewing.  Thus, I tend to start big creative projects (sewing, home repairs, gardening) on my vacations.  When I need to do something and don’t have a ton of time, I try to focus on the smallest part of the next step and not think too far ahead.

So that’s what I need to be creative.  Knowing all this doesn’t mean I’m super successful in all my creative endeavors, but knowing these things about myself does keep me more productive, rather than flailing.  And you?

*I wrote an essay about the basics of HabitRPG which you can read here.  The site is even better now than when I wrote the essay.  Or you can read about it by just going to the site.

Essay: On Body Size and Actresses.

Back when the Kickstarter madness happened with the Veronica Mars movie project, I mused to the boyfriend, “Kristen Bell just had a baby six weeks ago.  What’s she going to look like when they film that movie?”

Having now seen the finished product, I can say that she looked good. And she looked like she’d just had a baby.  This, of course, means she looked odd, because women who look like they’ve just had babies aren’t regulars in our movie world.

Here’s my take on where we are with female body types and media:  incredibly thin.  Look at Rose Byrne, look at Anna Kendrick, look at Emma Stone, look at Mila Kunis.  They are tiny, just one teetering step above near-emaciated, in my opinion.  Contrast that to a mid-80s Cyball Shepard or Kathleen Turner or Alley Sheedy, who lived on the thin side normal weight where they still have breasts and hips.  Those actresses looked great, but are larger than our current female standard.  It’s to the point that I’m wondering how many accidental pregnancies have been avoided in Hollywood because I’m not sure the female stars weigh enough to be ovulating.

Obviously there are all types of bodies. Some are naturally thin and lean, like Kira Knightly.* A lot of women, though, come with the type of body that has curves.  What I would like is for it to be okay to be an actress and have those curves instead of denying the hand that nature dealt.  I’m guessing that, during filming, Kristen Bell was in the normal weight range, maybe even mid-normal, but because the standard is set to incredibly thin, she looked huge.

This drives me crazy because I long for a diversity of body types in media as much as I do other types of diversity.  Hollywood has two set points for women:  incredibly thin and very large. It’s rare to see an actress I would consider normal weight.  Amy Adams was my go-to example for a long time, but she lost weight for American Hustle and it remains to be seen if it will come back to her.  The movie Pitch Perfect gives us examples of both of our standard women bodies:  the hefty Rebel Wilson, playing her fat for laughs** and all the other characters being of the uber-thin type.  It was noticeable enough for my friend to comment about the film, “I enjoyed it too. Although I had a hard time getting beyond the fact that almost everyone (except for the wonderfully uncategorizable Australian character) was so very skinny - made me wince to look at most of them. I don't even mean that ideologically, I just mean viscerally.”  I agreed with her (Ah, that's what they do now, those actresses. Starve, poor things.) and was disturbed that it had gotten to the point that I hadn’t even noticed.

(Veronica Mars movie spoiler in this paragraph)

I wanted to not care that the Veronica Mars on screen for the movie looked different than the Veronica Mars in the TV series, I really did. After all, in the series she was playing a teenager, and in the movie a woman of 28.  Women of 28 tend to weigh more than teenage girls.  But throughout the movie, I was distracted by her normal-sized shape, then annoyed at my distraction.  This distraction/annoyance ran in a constant loop for the length of the film.  The whole thing even launched into comedy for me at the pivotal scene when Logan and Veronica finally come together.  The actor who plays Logan is smaller than he was in the series and with Kristen Bell being larger, everything felt off in an amusing way.  After the movie was over, Matt and I discussed the body differences and he commented about that scene, “it was kind of like real life.”  I had to laugh, because it is what happens to (regular non-acting) couples as they age.  If the men don’t gain weight they tend to get scrawny, while the women pad up.  For a moment on screen we had reflected before us our reality, not our ideal.  The fact that the reality distracted me from the story is disturbing.

I should probably throw in a paragraph so obvious it’s worth commenting on just because it’s not worth commenting on.  Male actors don’t have this same pressure.  Though men do have pressures to meet an idealized masculine state (Chris Hemsworth, Channing Tatum and, even at times, Matt Damon are much larger than most men can ever hope to be) diversity in size of males is much more accepted.  Men who are fat (or of normal weight) tend to be comedians and in comedies, but not always.  Vince Vaughn is notorious for teetering of the edge of the body type more likely to be cast as a wise-cracking character actor, but he still gets leading man roles.  In fact, the horrendous movie The Dilemma (which I don’t recommend, except for the small Channing Tatum role) nicely summarizes the split in gender body type.  We have Vince Vaughn (incredibly airbrushed for the poster--it looks like they took off 30 pounds) and Kevin James holding down the guys-of-normal/overweight roles.  Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder round out (or not as they have few curves) the too-thin girlfriend roles. ***

So, Hollywood, put hiring women of different body types on your to-do list.  I want to see curves, I want to see hips, I want to see that good-looking is all different kinds of things.  I’m happy to report that upon a second viewing of the Veronica Mars movie, Kristen Bell just looked good, not heavy.  So it didn’t take me long to adjust.  If you start peppering your films with good actresses of every type, we probably will adjust, and will be better for it.

*Although looking at a few photos, I think she could put on a few pounds.

**And the fact that fat actresses are few and far between and only used for comedy and making fun of their body shapes is fodder for a completely different essay.

***More fodder for another essay:  the women are much better actors than the men in this film.  Yet no starring roles for them.

Essay: Advice for those in college, or planning on going.

Some random advice to you, because these things are on my mind. 

Internships

Some things are much easier than you think they are.  Internships, for one.  If you are like I was, the name is rather intimidating.  But it’s kind of the same thing as volunteering (if you are a humanities major) or a job (if you are in one of those fields where they actually pay their interns.)  So if you have ever volunteered, or held a job, it’s pretty much the same thing, but with a spiffier title.  You apply, which can be a formal process or something like stopping by the local historical society and talking to the director, then you get the internship and you follow the directions and do as you are told.

Do what you like

Speaking of volunteering/interning/working while you are in college.  If at all possible, find things to do that interest you.  If you get work-study, try and find a work-study position that interests you, even if it doesn’t directly pertain to your major.  If you decide to volunteer, do something that is fun to you, not what you think would look good on your resume.  Same for internships.  The reason is that you might not do what you thought you were going to do after college and if you are applying for jobs that are outside of your area of study, it’s great to have some experience somewhere in your past.  It may be that you have to work food service to get you through school, but if you love to spend time with children, try and volunteer with them.  Maybe you will end up working in a school or a daycare and you will be happy you have that experience with children.

Tattoos

Really think about it before you get a tattoo.  Think about the placement and design for a very long time before you commit. This is because--like everything--styles of tattoos come and go.  Maybe you picked out an awesome tribal tattoo for your very first, because tribal tattoos are the coolest thing ever.  How will you feel ten years later when someone points out how clichéd and lame tribal tattoos are?  (Could this be an example from my actual experience?  I’ll let you decide.)  In general, I would also caution you to put those tattoos where they can be hidden, especially when you are just starting down the tattoo path.  You’ve got your whole life to splash them across your body.  Put the first ones where they can’t be seen until you know that you want to be the kind of person who has visible tattoos.  It’s possible that in 10 years, you won’t be that kind of person.

Drinking and Drugging

Think carefully about drinking and using drugs.  If you are going away to a new school, meeting really cool people and ready for new experiences, it’s tempting to dive right into everything.  But you don’t really know these new friends and who knows if they will be the kind of friends you had back home who watched out for you while you were not 100% sober.  John Green said once that there are those in college who say never to drink and those in collage to drink all the time. He advises that you probably don’t want to pick either of those factions.  If you are going to drink, do it lightly and with care.  You’ve got stuff to learn and assignments to complete.  It’s best to minimize the fallout from your social time (read: hangovers).  Also, that stuff’s expensive, and you’re probably underage which makes it illegal.

Classes

Take fun classes!  You’ve got requirements to meet, sure, but find the most interesting classes you can to fulfill those requirements.  As someone who wasn’t the biggest fan of science and math, I was pretty happy to take Botany and Anthropology to fulfill science requirements and Logic to settle the last of my Mathematics requirements.  And I turned out to be awesome at Logic, which was not an experience I had in any other math class of my education.  Maybe you love science and math but are dreading your humanities requirements.  Find the crossover classes that sound interesting.  Or just scan through the schedule and take what appeals to you.  Maybe a class in memoir writing will be just what your physics-loving self desires.

Protein and PE

Eat protein every day and take a PE class every semester.  I’m not kidding about the protein.  There’s a good chance you will become a vegetarian/be faced with an entire dining hall devoted to pasta/have to cook for yourself for the first time in your life.  Take it from me and HAVE PROTEIN WITH EVERY MEAL.  And PE in college is awesome, plus it makes you exercise, which is good for your stress levels and health.  Most colleges have really great choices in all areas of PE.  I took everything from Ballroom Dancing to Advanced Swimming and Diving to Mountain Biking.  I would have loved to squeeze in a hiking PE class, or learning how to kayak or scuba dive, but I had to graduate.  If you take the class with friends, you have built in social time during the week too.

That’s all the random advice for today, collegiate friends.  Good luck to you.

Essay: Portrait of a teacher who hated me.

She was my eleventh grade Accelerated English teacher and the rumor was that if you were in her regular English classes, she wasn’t great, but she loved her accelerated students and it would be just fine.  Ms. P. was tall and well kempt, a no-nonsense woman who got things done.  She had five children, and that, in combination with how early they all got married, probably means she was a Mormon, though of the rare sub-types that used “Ms.” and worked for pay.

The rumors weren’t wrong about her preference for her accelerated classes, she sparkled as the year got going.  We proceeded at a fast clip, blasting through the Scarlet Letter, the Crucible and Huckleberry Finn in no time at all.  The two of us shared the same first name, and I made some rather wise observations at the beginning of the year, so things started out okay, but the ardor faded at least on her part.

I hadn’t always been tracked into the smart English class.  Most of junior high had been spent in regular English with the ambivalent readers and disinterested learners, but my ninth grade teacher had been impressed by my writing and suggested I change things for second semester, so I made the switch.  Accelerated English was more fun because people wanted to be there and we could have actual discussions.  And I read and wrote well enough to keep up with the others.  Things were fine that year and in tenth grade.

But ultimately, I was a lazy student.  I did my homework, but didn’t go out of my way to shine things up.  This worked well for other classes, but not for Ms. P’s Accelerated English.  She wanted blood, sweat and tears and I wasn’t really interested in providing any of those things.  Junior year was also a rough time in my mental health world, and the creeping depression that followed me around that year probably didn’t help endear her to me.

I can’t remember an official moment when I realized she didn’t like me, it was more of a gradual process.  There were comments on my work that struck me as rather harsh, and she didn’t choose me for reading aloud anymore.  I think subconsciously I started slacking off and developed an odd habit of forgetting things were due, which meant scrambling to complete assignments 15 minutes before school started.

When the semester changed over, she started bugging me about assignments not turned in.  I had no idea what she was talking about, but agreed to get them to her.  As far as I knew, I had completed everything, but she was the teacher, so who was I to disagree?  I limped through that quarter, not really sure what to do.  I dreaded going to the class, just as much as she seemed to resent me taking up space, but she was the only Accelerated English teacher, so I was stuck with her.  I can still remember the feeling of freedom that came with the sudden realization that I could transfer to a regular English class.

I did just that, explaining to the counselor that things weren’t working so well in my current class.  The counselor spoke with Ms. P. who agreed to let me switch once I had all my work turned in.  There was a tense day or two when I worried what would happen, because I didn’t know what assignments I had missed. My mother finally called Ms. P. directly and asked what I was missing.  There was a silence while she consulted her gradebook and then a longer silence before she finally said, “She seems to have turned everything in.”  When my mother repeated the conversation, I felt like I’d won, but my mother said we’d both lost.

Regular English was spectacularly easy.  We took an entire quarter to read (re-read, in my case) Huckleberry Finn.  Most people couldn’t finish two short chapters per night and the discussion was anemic, but the teacher was impressed by me and I felt happier there than with the strivers.

Despite my frustration with her, I felt oddly connected to Ms. P.  She was kind of like the bad boyfriend you spend too much time trying to figure out.  Why was she so mean to me?  Did I remind her too much of herself?  Was she taking a strict line to motivate me, and that failed spectacularly?  And why did she think I hadn’t turned in assignments I had completed?

After leaving her class, I avoided her, though I saw her in the spring down on the Greenbelt by the river.  She was riding her bike and I was watching my boyfriend skate, which was an activity I both loved and loathed doing.  I remember feeling embarrassed she saw me taking part in such a traditional girlfriend role.  We both pretended not to see each other.

My senior year she was the editor of the school literary magazine and I remember being very surprised when something I submitted won first prize—I figured she would sink anything from me, she was the kind of teacher who was overly involved in the student activities she supervised.  Was she more hands-off than I thought, or was the writing really that good?  It sent me back to puzzling.  One of my friends told me she had asked where I was going to college and seemed pleased to hear I was heading off to a women’s college.  That she would even ask also confused me.

It’s a teacher’s job to get their students to learn, ideally by connecting them with things to love about the subject.  Even then I understood that it is an impossible task to like all your students, so it seemed reasonable—though embarrassing—that this teacher in particular would dislike me.  As an adult, I still wonder what she was thinking, but I don’t fault her for her actions.  She provided a good lesson in searching for what I needed and that sometimes giving up is the best course of action.  It’s not the American tale of striving that we’re all supposed to believe, but it is something that needs to be learned at some time.

Essay: Veronica Mars.

Veronica Mars is an awesome television series.  I would write more, but I'm currently obsessed and must watch more episodes.

Essay: Concert Band

More memories of high school band.  Feel free to add your own.

Marching Band ended in mid-October with competition, though we would still continue to play the football games through the end of their season in late October or early November, depending on how many games the football team won.  There was one last march in the holiday parade, which happened the Saturday before Thanksgiving.  But after Mid-October we entered Concert Band Season.

The first part of Concert Band season was without competition. We had to prep songs to play for the holiday concert that would happen in December, not long before Christmas break.  We still called it Christmas break then.  The transition from Marching Band to Concert Band happened on the same day when we passed in our Marching Band music, which we hadn’t really needed for several weeks now, because we had it memorized. Passing in music involved JP telling us the name of the piece he was collecting, then we rummaged through our music folders, recovered the piece of music and passed it down to the first chair person who sorted it neatly and walked it up to whoever was serving as JP’s assistant.  As with everything that involves large groups, there were multiple pleas for quiet, because the thing to do after you’ve handed over a sheet of music is to continue the conversation that you were having before you were asked to locate and turn in that sheet of music. Or noodle around on your instrument. There were also multiple people who couldn’t find their piece of music and usually one or two people who weren’t paying attention and turned in the wrong piece of music.

Passing out the Concert Band music worked the same, but in reverse.  The plus of passing out music is we usually got one new piece at a time, then played it, before the next came out.  It was a lot easier to stay focused.

Our music came from some central place at the district office.  Every band director I ever had referenced going to that place and picking things out, but I never saw the room.  The music arrived in generally fairly good shape, with all the parts present and usually with enough copies for each part so photocopies did not have to be made.  A full accounting of pieces we performed has been lost to time passing, but I do recall a performance of “Colonel Bogey March” that infamous song that is whistled in the movie Bridge on the River Kwai.  I remember this piece in particular, because during one part of the performance, JP encouraged the audience to whistle, and the sight of all the parents whistling happily along had me laughing so hard I couldn’t actually play.  I also remember a performance of “Thus Spake Zarathusa,” which was just fun to play.  I’m sure we tackled things that had nothing to do with movies too.

The first semester of the year, band never had drummers present, because they had their own sixth period class so as to practice all their Marching Band drum corps stuff.  Drummers usually dropped in for fourth period band practice the two days before the band concert, but they were otherwise absent.  It was rather nice as drummers are worse than brass players for repeatedly playing past the cutoff point and noodling around.  It was such a shock my first year when the semester turned and suddenly the drummers were suddenly present; taking up space in the percussion area, being the loud and fairly obnoxious ego-driven quasi-jerks I was perpetually attracted to.

So we played a Christmas Concert (we still called it that) and we had at least one competition in winter and perhaps one in the spring.  Competition involved getting out of part or all of the school day, traveling by bus to where the competition was held and playing in front of judges, who gave us scores from one to five (they may have been in Roman Numerals: I to V) with one (I) being the highest score.  I don’t think we were a stellar Concert Band, though the stakes were lower.  It wasn’t a competition like Marching Band Competition, with all the bands in a stadium and lined up on the field together afterwards to hear the results.  We went, we played, we went home and somewhere along the line someone told us our score.

The last thing Concert Band we had to do every year was play for graduation, an activity that has made me loathe “Pomp and Circumstance” as well as graduation ceremonies in general.  Graduation took place at the Boise State University Pavilion, where the basketball team played all their games.  There was a stage constructed at one end of the court. Each graduate walked across to receive their diploma and we sat below the stage on the same level as the 500 people who needed to be announced and graduated.  Before we played our piece (sophomore year it was “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha) and other things happened during the ceremony, and every single person was announced and clapped for, JP would raise his baton and we would put our instruments to our lips and play Pomp and Circumstance, repeating all but the beginning and end over and over again while the teeming mass of graduates shuffled in and took their seats.  The song would be stuck in my head for days after the ceremony.  Strangely, we played something else for the exit, and repeated it just as many times, but it was not nearly as memorable.  Maybe it was the Triumphant March from Aida?

For me, Concert Band was just the thing you did because you were in band.  It wasn’t the fun of Marching Band, and it wasn’t the endless obligation of Pep Band, but just the class we went to every day and theoretically (at least on my part) practiced for.  It was the same kind of band I’d been doing since seventh grade.  It was fun when a piece came together and it was a good place to go in the middle of my day, but I don’t miss it as much as I miss Marching Band.

Essay: Marching Band Part II

More regurgitating of band memories.  Feel free to add your own in comments.

Marching band was a temperature slide—unbearably hot at the beginning and freezing cold by the end.  It was a lot of standing around quietly to learn something that was all sound and music.  Marching band was a dusty field, hideous unflattering uniforms and free admission (but sadly for me, mandatory attendance) at all the football games.

The first two weeks of practice we cranked things out.  To begin, JP would show us a diagram of what we were going to do.  He hand wrote our marching patterns on gridded paper shaped like the football field.  I figured out later he also hand-wrote arrangements of our music.  JP was one of those teachers who rankled me—his use of “gals” paired with “guys” came off as sexist and he was old and had that slightly jokey authority figure nature that was kind of hard to buy.  There was also a lot of imploring.  But when I think of the logistics of setting a hoard of musicians and dancers marching around a 100-yard field, my mind boggles.

With the day’s pattern in mind we would run through the music—we were supposed to be memorizing it, and ideally have it pretty much down by this point—and then head out to the field.  As with all large groups, this took forever, and thanks to the fact we all had instruments, it came to pass with a lot more noise than necessary.  The band room was separate from the school, tucked off the back of the gym.  Our practice field was across the loop of road that circled the school.  The football team’s field was further—they took up the middle of the track, and maybe another field off the side.  Sometimes they would cut through our field on the way back in from their own practice.  The band ignored them, though the drill teamers chattered with them.  In my school, football and band did not cross paths, except for the one guy who did both.

Once we straggled out and into position, we would make some attempt at pulling ourselves together.  Various attempts by various people were made to be more military and attentive in our practices, but they lasted a day at most before we devolved into talking and “horsing around” while JP used his megaphone to grab our attention long enough to get us started.

What I remember most about marching band practice was standing around.  We’d run a bit of the show, then screech to a halt—though there were always one or two in the bass section that just had to keep playing.  Then, most of us would stand at attention, while JP fixed something on some other part of the field.  “Attention” often had a half-life of three minutes before we would start to murmur to the person next to us, to quietly play a few measures, or start to spin or sway in our spot.  When the pause was very long we would resort to gymnastics—one guy could do a front flip with no hands and a lot of us did cartwheels, or pushups (meted out as punishment, but actually fun).  We also burst into song at regular intervals.  For decades now, I’ve been singing the line“the check’s in the mail, you’re beautiful” at appropriate moments, because that was in regular rotation for a time on the marching band field.  The boyfriend pointed out it was a line from a Werid Al song.

All that standing around must have led to something, because eventually, we had the entire program running.  I didn’t know it at the time, but there’s something magical about creating both music and patterns on a football field. And I had no idea of the incredibly brief lifespan of that magic.  After high school, I never marched again.  It’s not really an activity that lends itself to the adult world.

Essay: On being called a perpetual adolescent.

Last weekend, someone referred to me (and Matt too) as “perpetual adolescents.”  The description didn’t seem to faze Matt, but for me it was an arrow that shot through me and sunk the rest of my weekend, leaving me alternatingly angry and upset.  I’m not sure what aspect of my life they were referring to, but there are many things they could hang that comment on.  I chalked it up to not having any children, but it might be that I haven’t married my boyfriend or that I work 32 hours per week instead of 40, or that I invested a master’s degree worth of tuition and living expenses in a job I haven’t been able to be hired for.  Or perhaps the fact that I refuse to buckle down and do what needs to be done to get said job, because I can’t imagine anything more lothesome.

So yeah, there’s a lot about me that could be construed as adolescent. Including the fact that I haven’t gotten around to saying to the person in question, “hey, what did you mean by that?” and “You know, you really hurt my feelings.”

But here’s the thing about my life.  I chose every single bit of it.  I don’t have children because I have never wanted them and I have a feeling that lack of wanting would make me a less-than-adequate mother.  It’s possible I would rally and be outstanding, but I’d rather not stake someone else’s life on it. I’ve known people raised by disinterested parents and it’s not a good situation for any of them.  I’m not married because I don’t see the point.  I’m committed, he’s committed and the social structure allows us to be together without signing papers, so for now, no marriage.

I work 32 hours per week because my job allows me that freedom and I would rather have the eight hours to do other things.  I take a hit financially, which means not really ever having a vacation, but aside from the mortgage and student loans, I can work 32 hours, live debt free and spend more time doing things I enjoy.  The fact I’m not a teacher rankles me, but again, I’ve chosen there too.  I could move away to a city or town with more teaching opportunities, but I love Portland and would rather be here and not be a teacher than to be a teacher any other place.  I don’t work as a substitute because it’s a job that calls on things I don’t really like to do, and has nothing of the teaching things I do like to do.  I make my choice every year.  I’m not going to sub.  If that means not getting a teaching job, then so be it.

Though there are aspects of my life that I don’t like, I’m thrilled I got to have a say in how my life is lived. That hasn’t always been the case for women, and it’s not the case for women in some parts of the world today.  A generation ago, I wouldn’t have been able to live with my boyfriend, would have had trouble getting credit in my own name and (depending on how you define generations—my family tends to reproduce rather slowly) had trouble getting birth control.  Before that, I probably would have married and married early, even before I finished college as my father’s sister’s did.  Before that I wouldn’t have been able to own property, or vote, or live on my own.

In the movie Pleasantville, two 90s-era teenagers are transported to the bucolic TV town of Pleasantville where they both go about wreaking havoc on the ideal setting.  There’s an exchange of dialogue I love.  It takes place after things are starting to change in the town.   The basketball team doesn’t always win their games, the books actually have words in them and people have started thinking about places other than Pleasantville.  Margaret, the girl from Pleasantville, asked David, the boy from the future a question.  From the script:

MARGARET

               So what's it like?

                               DAVID

               What?

                               MARGARET

                       (a whisper)

               Out there.

        She clings onto the words like they could transport her by

        themselves. David thinks for a moment.

                               DAVID

               Oh. I don't know...It's different...

        She leans forward.

                               MARGARET

               How?

                               DAVID

               Well it's louder...And scarier I guess...And...and a lot

               more dangerous...

                               MARGARET

               Sounds fantastic.

Margaret’s longing for that other place, where things aren’t safe and easy, resonates with me.  I could have gone down the path that was clearly marked for me:  college, marriage, job, children, etc.  But some of those choices didn’t click with me so I went in another direction.  It’s possible to construe my life choices as adolescent, but I see myself as fully adult.  I’ve supported myself since leaving college, I save for the future. I stay informed of issues, vote, pay my taxes and volunteer in my community.  And what I want for people in this world is the ability to be able to make their own choices about what is right for them, just as I have.

http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/pleasantville_shooting.html

Essay: Marching Band part I

Note:  I’m going to spend a few weeks of the essays dredging up details of high school band because I’m trying to remember things that have sunk into some mostly forgotten part of my brain.  Feel free to tell me any of your band memories, should you be lucky enough to have them.

Also:  I apparently never finished writing this, so it just trails off.

It was in high school that band changed.  Before it had always been an elective, as in: “Are you taking band next year?”  At the high school level it became, “Are you in band?”  In junior high band, we were segregated by grade, travelling through seventh grade band, to eighth and then ninth grade band.  Eighth and ninth grade band got to practice marching by appearing in the holiday parade the week before Thanksgiving, but otherwise didn’t interact with the other kids in band.  In high school there was just one class with all three grades.  We were an activity, like student council in that we had a class all to ourselves during the school day.  We were also a group, like the sports teams, in that for part of the year we had practice outside of school hours.

Marching Band started off the high school band calendar.  Our practices began the same time the football, volleyball and soccer teams started their practice, about two weeks before school started.  I remember them being incredibly early in the morning, although I think we started at eight or nine o’clock.  Unless it was insanely hot, eight to ten in the morning was a great time of day, before the heat really kicked in.  The football players had two-a-days the first week of practice, so they were there with us and then came back in the afternoon for a second practice.  I always admired the cheerleaders, who started early and were finishing up by the time we rolled into the parking lot.

The first day was usually all about logistics: getting the sophomores oriented, passing out the music, sketching out the plan for the season.  We had not very much time to learn music for both parade marching and at the same time start to work on the halftime show. We would begin to build the piece and have the first song done in time for the first game, and then build more onto the show as the season went on.  Mid-October was the competition, so that was our big date on the fall calendar.

As a sophomore, starting marching band was fairly overwhelming.  There was a lot of music to memorize right off including at least three songs to know for parades, plus the pieces for the show.  I wasn’t very good at memorizing and mostly floundered at this part of band.  Avoiding memorizing music—and the drummer boyfriend—were the main reasons I played cymbals the last two years of high school marching band. 

We also had to learn to properly march.  Our band director was nearing retirement, having been at my high school since the early 1960s.  By the early 1990s he was still a fairly cheerful guy, although a bit stooped in the shoulders, and he was happy to shepherd us through the high school band experience.  We called him by his initials, JP, rather than Mr. Perkins. 

JP had done his military service in the Army band and would now and again encourage us to go in as a musician if we were joining the services.  The reason being, according to him: “while the other guys are doing pushups, you will be doing this” he would say, wiggling his fingers to mime playing the trumpet.  An aside: I told that story to a friend who had gone into the army as a musician, and his reply was.  “Yeah. Unless there’s a war.”  So beware.

JP loved to teach us to march, especially the “roll step” that was necessary to carry out the smooth maneuvers on field and parade route.  A good Roll Step involves placing your heel down and then rolling to your toes which minimizes upper body movement.  He also liked to drill us on marching, especially at the beginning of the season when there was more time in practice.  We would begin in a big block of people and started off in step while a drummer beat a steady beat.  Then JP, or the drum major would call out the changes, “forward march” “right face” “left face,” “mark time” “halt” while we attempted to follow them as an entire group.  People who messed up stepped off the field and watched while the group got smaller and smaller until there were only a few.  

And a bit from the book.

I'm feeling rather gregarious, so here's a bit from the book in progress.  This is from early on, maybe chapter 3 or so.  Irene is our main female character, and Marie is one of her good friends.  They are traveling back from the high school basketball tournament in Pocatello where they have spent two days "supporting the team" in pep band, though mostly just hanging out, waiting for the next game.

“Spill it.” Marie plopped down on the empty seat next to Irene for the ride back.  The tournament was a bust.  The basketball team had headed immediately for the losers bracket, and then to the bottom of the losers bracket, making each game a bit more doleful than the last.  Even the presence of the pep band could not pep the team—or its crowds—to much in the way of enthusiasm, much less winning a game. 

Marie was the only other female saxophone and normally would have been her partner in crime for the trip, but she was preoccupied with brokering a peace accord between Karen and her now ex-Jason and she herself had recently taken up with different Jason, this one a tuba player, so had been running with the brass crowd.  With Irene hanging out with the drummers, they hadn’t crossed paths much during the trip, but Marie had a keen eye and a good ear for gossip and Eddie’s constant hovering near Irene had not gone unnoted.

“What do you know?” Irene asked her, searching for dirt.

“Do you want to know the wild, unsubstantiated rumor; the one I heard and believe, or the facts I, myself have observed.” She spoke in a low voice, conscious of the people around them.  Marie could ferret out the secrets, but she also knew how to keep them to herself.

“Must I choose?” Irene grinned.  The two of them had been friends since junior high and knew each other’s ways.

“Good point.” Marie agreed.  “Let’s start with the wild rumor. You, Irene Johansen, snuck into Alex’s room and engaged in various forms of congress with all four drummers staying there.”

“Ugh.” Irene protested.  “Not Alex’s room.  Stefan ended up in Alex’s room, no way would there be congress of any kind happening there. Not even general passage of legislation.” Stefan was the lumpy and slow male cymbal player.

“Ah, so there would be with Alex.” Marie pushed a bit, curious.  She didn’t really understand Irene and Alex.  They always seemed like friends who were on the verge of fighting.  But something also seemed to indicate they were on the verge of—well not love, exactly.  Maybe a physical consummation of some sort?  Both kept their feelings confined, so even Marie’s best reconnaissance had left her with confusing data.

Irene made a face, thinking of Alex and various forms congress. “Not going to happen.  Who starts those rumors, anyway?  Let’s move on to what you do believe.”

“I heard that Eddie has a thing for you.”

“And?”

“And that’s what I heard.” Marie said.

Irene sighed.  Marie was holding out.

“Let’s move on to what you’ve observed.” Irene said, deflecting the request.

Marie gave her a look. “I’ve noticed that Eddie has never been more than 10 feet from you this entire trip.” she counted one on her finger. “I’ve noticed that even right now he is not more than 10 feet from you.” She counted two while Irene leaned past Marie to scan the bus. Eddie was sitting one seat behind and across the aisle.  He and Alex were working out a complex rhythm, softly beating their drumsticks on their legs.”

“I’m willing to bet,” Marie continued, counting off another finger, “that he looks over to check on you before I hit one.” She began counting down,  ”Five.  Four, Three, Two.”

Dammit.  Right as Marie hit the number two, Eddie looked up, caught Irene looking at him and smiled at her. Irene smiled back and ducked down again.

“Furthermore,” Marie counted off her last finger “I’ve noticed how much you’ve been flirting with him this weekend.”

“I have not.” Irene protested.  She had hardly talked to him, since they had the conversation on the way there about joining drum corps for marching band.

Marie fixed her best stare on Irene. “Please, lady.  I know you.  The hair flipping has amped up, plus, I haven’t been too far away to see the sideways glances you favor and the cheery waves you’ve been dispersing all weekend.”

Irene rolled her eyes, caught.

“What I want to know,” Marie leaned closer. “is do you like him?”

Irene sighed, and kicked the back of her seat a few times, thinking. “Maybe?”

“He’s a drummer,” Marie countered “You have to give me more than a maybe.”  Marie and Irene had fought back against the drummers through most of the marching band season.  They didn’t like the drummers’ attitudes, their inflated egos and their bossiness.  The two of them had done a pretty good job making themselves pains in the asses of the entire percussion section.  Irene’s feelings had changed a bit as the months had passed, mostly paved by Alex.  Marie wasn’t really convinced drummers were okay.  Her head had been turned by the shiny volume of the brass section, working her way from trumpet to trombone to now tuba.

Irene thought a bit.  “I don’t not like him.” she said slowly, “but I’m not sure if I like him because he likes me, or because I like him.  I don’t really know him very well.”

Marie squinted one eye and observed her.  “So we need to shrink the group a bit, I think.”

“What do you mean?

“I mean, your group is too big, he can’t get a word in edgewise.  You should have a few people, like no more than five, over to your house and see what he does.”

“I don’t know,” Irene hedged.  “Maybe I want to find out if he likes me.”

“Oh he likes you.” Marie said, glancing over her shoulder and catching Eddie peering past Alex again.

“Well, then,” said Irene.  “Maybe we should wait and find out what his next move is.”

Essay: Paul Walker

Paul Walker, The Fast and the Furious.

photo from IMDB

It was spring of 2003 and I was in the incredibly boring “observation” phase of my teacher education career.  While other of my classmates were making deeper connections with the teachers they were observing and even getting to teach something now and then, my mentor teacher didn’t really seem to want me around, and encouraged me to observe other teachers on the staff.  They didn’t want me around either, so I floated from period to period, class to class like the perpetual new girl who didn’t fit in.  In hindsight, I can’t believe I was paying PSU for this experience.

So it was that I was sitting in the classroom of a rather absent-minded teacher nearing retirement. It was during the passing period so the kids were doing things kids do before they get to class early:  check their phones, wander around and talking to people, engaging in shenanigans.  The building itself was soul-killing.  It had been built in the 1970s and had no windows for energy efficiency.  Many classrooms were divided by folding walls, so that classes could come together and teachers could co-teach.  That practice had been abandoned, but the flimsy partitions still remained.  It just meant that you could hear what was going on in the other classes, if the teacher or class was too loud.  Sometimes I wonder if there are things more depressing in the US than educational policy through the years.  I mean, when you really think about it?

I had perched in an empty desk in the back of the room and was watching the students, which was the best part of the experience.  One girl had gone to Disneyland over Spring Break and had some pictures to show her friends.  A few of them looked over her shoulder. 

“And I met Paul Walker,” she said, shyly.  And there she was in the photo, standing with a smiling blue-eyed blond.

“He was just there?  At Disneyland?” one of her friends asked her.

“Yes.” The girl smiled, “And I asked him if I could take his picture and he said yes.”

“That’s amazing.”

Who was Paul Walker? I wondered.

Another girl, not part of the friend group, perked up.  “What was that?” she asked, bustling over.  She was one of those big girls: tall, big boned, big hair, big voice, big personality.  “Oh my god, that’s PAUL WALKER!” she exclaimed.  “HOW DID YOU GET THIS PICTURE OF PAUL WALKER!?!”  She squinted at the photo, not listening for the answer.  “IT’S REALLY PAUL WALKER!  SHE HAS A PICTURE OF PAUL WALKER!  I CAN’T BELIVE THIS IS YOU WITH PAUL WALKER!”  Her voice took on that pitch and decibel level that only teenage girls and annoying radio contest winners can reach.

The classroom teacher looked on her shrieking in a nonplussed manner.  The bell hadn’t rung yet, so no need to reign her in yet.  But her shrieking didn’t go unnoticed by the others in the class. “Who the hell is Paul Walker” I heard muttered from different areas.  The partition was even pried open and a much younger, less absent minded teacher poked her head in.

“Everything okay in here?” she asked, scanning the room.

“SHE HAS A PICTURE OF PAUL WALKER!” the girl shrieked to the teacher, who was not at all interested.

“Maybe you could keep it down.” the teacher suggested, and closed the partition as the bell rang.

The picture was returned, the girl settled down and I made a mental note to check who Paul Walker was.

It turned out I knew who he was.  He was the guy in the Fast and the Furious.  The same sort of blonde blue-eyed leading man Hollywood pops out by the hundreds and throws against the wall of audience enjoyment to see who sticks.  He’s the kind of guy I think of as a working man actor.  Good enough (or good looking enough) to get major parts in minor films, but never considered a serious actor, either because he didn’t have the acting chops or because the path to serious acting is a difficult and treacherous one only achieved by a few.  And why not sit back and rake in the money making movies that the masses love?

And now he’s gone.

I’ve never not paired Paul Walker’s name with that girl shrieking in that classroom long ago.  She’s probably moved on, I’m guessing Paul Walker was a passing adolescent infatuation, but I also can picture her hearing the news early on a Sunday morning and shrieking “PAUL WALKER IS DEAD!” loud enough to bring her husband and children from their beds, blearly-eyed and wondering,  “Who the hell is Paul Walker?”

May he rest in peace, and may his friends and family have an easy transition to a world without him.

Essay: Calf Circumference.

I’m in college and sitting around with my boyfriend John, his brother Mike and their friend Jeff.  John and I haven’t been together long and this may be the first time I’ve met the brother and also the friend.  The TV is on and the boys are talking, seeming to mostly ignore me, but also checking me out as the new girlfriend.  Eventually conversation turns to Mike saying:  “I swear on the the three women I’ve had sex with..”

“There is no way you’ve had sex with three women.” John interrupts.

“Yes I have.”

“Bullshit.” Jeff retorts.  “Amy Lawrence, one.”

“And Jennifer Farnsworth, two.” John picks up the list.  “There isn’t anyone else.”

“Yes there is.”  Mike turned a shade of pink and was pursing his lips at their doubt.

“Who?”  both John and Jeff insist.

“Ellen Chadwick.” Mike nods, a small smile on his face.

“With the huge calves?” John asked.

“Her calves aren’t huge” Mike protests.

“Oh my god, they are!  They’re tremendous.” Jeff interjects.  “Very intimidating.”

“Her calves are very large.” John loops me in with an aside.

“I got that.”

The conversation goes on, establishing time and place (last summer, after work) and ends with John still skeptical that Mike actually slept with Ellen of the huge calves.  But I was frozen from the moment her calf size was brought up.  It had never occurred to me before, but did people identify me by the size of my calves?  I was wearing shorts and it took all my willpower not to look down at my own legs, or shift in my chair, for fear the boys would realize that Mike was not the only one of the brothers who had slept with someone with large calves.

So my calves.  Not very small.  And they are larger now than they were then. This has become a problem of late, because I would love a comfortable pair of boots and very few boots are to be found that fit me.  When I mentioned this conundrum to my brother he observed, “Yeah, you totally got Dad’s calves.  I wish I had your calves.”

That comment had nearly the same effect on me as the long-ago calf assessment of poor Ellen Chadwick.  I had never stopped to contemplate my brother’s calves, but his assessment of mine was spot-on.  My father’s calves are also huge, very manly and DNA has bequeathed them to me.  Now that I’ve looked, I wouldn’t mind trading calves with my brother, his are a bit less robust, more likely to fit into some cute boots.

But something else has made that conversation above stick in my heard all these years.  It was the simple pulling apart of a woman and classifying her.  Someone recently pointed out to me that we fixate on “parts” in our culture.  How it’s kind of odd to see just an arm, or just some abs, but that we have broken down the body into pieces so of course we just display bits and pieces of the body.

I’ve put in my time around guy talk.  Hanging out with boyfriends, drummers, chefs and drivers at Pizza Hut, Park Rangers, coworkers at Whole Foods.  I’ve head versions of the above conversation over and over again.  And, you know what.  That conversation bugs me.

Women talk about the men they sleep with, don’t get me wrong.  But there isn’t that level of parsing and partitioning of the person they shared a bed with.  I feel like this is one of the ways men and women aren’t equal.  Men still have the power, by and large, so they can feel free to divide women into bits and pieces and classify them.  Whereas women just don’t. 

That’s not to say that they never remark on the physical attributes of the men they sleep with, descriptions can be helpful, but I haven’t ever heard a woman boil down a guy to “weird daisy tattoo on his back” or “long earlobes” or “third nipple.”  There tends to be a taking in of the whole person, even if it is someone they intend not to sleep with ever again. Maybe this is because women are more verbal, but I think it’s because we’re still in the position of less power.  

Essay: A project for an ebb tide.

I’m about to embark on yet another project.  For those of you who know me, this isn’t much of a surprise.  I’m very project-focused.  In fact, were my blog a drinking game, most of the regular readers would be half-soused if the drinking word was “project.”  It’s not surprising that the universe found me a job at a school that uses the Project Approach to educate its children.  I’m all about the focused effort toward a goal that is the project.

I’m a bit at an ebb tide right now.  In fact, last night I started to write an essay about my ebb tide, but found I didn’t have enough energy to parse out what exactly that means and then format those thoughts into legible sentences, let alone paragraphs.  I can tell you that I don’t have a lot of extra oomph right now.  And that I don’t want to be a lot of things I usually am happy to be.  Farmer for one, that’s currently on hold.  The yard is a mess.  Enthusiastic athlete, that’s another one.  Running (jogging, really) has been on hold, because every time I do it, I hurt my foot.  I’m just doing a bit of walking in the mornings for now. Homemaker, there’s another thing I’m not really interested in right now.  I’m cooking at a minimal level to feed myself and doing just a bit of cleaning to keep the house in barely contained order.  But that’s it.

I think this feeling will pass. It feels temporary.  I might just be overly tired—I haven’t really been sleeping very well the past few weeks—or hunkering down for the cold winter.  Maybe my ancient farmer within wants me to rest after the harvest, despite the fact I never really got around to harvesting this year.

So while I’m waiting for the flood tide to return, here’s what I’m doing:  I’m writing 500 words a day from tomorrow until the end of the year.  That’s 500 words times 61 days.  I’ll have 30,500 words come December 31.  30,500 words of what, you ask?  Well, that would be the new novel I started in July and wrote daily until school started to ramp up again.  My plan is to get a first draft (hence the project) and then do something I’ve never actually done:  revise that first draft into something actually good.

I’ve written about 17,000 words already, mostly in chunks larger than 500 words.  That plus my 30,500 to come will have me ending up short of the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000, (and with two months instead of one) but that’s fine.  Ebb tide is saying NaNoWriMo isn’t really doable this year.  So I’ll adapt.  I know I can write 500 words in about 20 minutes and I feel like I can find 20 minutes per day from now until the end of the year.  And I know that I feel better having written.  And I know I just want the thing to get written.  And then I want it to be better.

I might have time to throw in an essay for the blog now and then, but if I don’t, maybe I’ll post a bit or piece of what I’m working on.  But perhaps not.  We shall see.  At any rate, I’m off on another adventure.  Wish me luck.

Essay: From the middle.

I've been taking a writing class through the Attic Institute.  It is a five-week class that ends this Sunday and culminates (at least to my mind) in a reading.  That's right, I'm doing a reading at a bar.  With my other classmates, of course.  There was no time for an essay this week, as I've been polishing my piece.  But perhaps you want to read what I will read? This is from the middle of the book I'm working on, and some of you might recognize part of it from a prompt I wrote earlier this summer.  The book has three main characters:  Irene, Eddie and Alex.  This part mostly concerns Irene and her friends as well as Eddie.  Alex is mentioned once, but otherwise is not present.

            There were five of them, piled in the car.  Five of them barely fit in the tiny white Mustang II, but they made do.  Irene was driving, of course, and Katherine, due to a complex matrix of length of friendship combined with an early opt-in option she created herself, had permanent shotgun.  As Karen, Eddie and Marie dove into the back seat, Irene realized she and Eddie had been together long enough for a routine to develop.  Karen and Marie always put Eddie in the middle, because he could stretch his long legs out between the two bucket seats while he wrapped his arms around her friends.  Still, it hadn’t quite become routine.  Eddie caught her eyes in the rearview mirror, checking to see if he was okay.  She smiled and patted him on the shin, enjoying the change she’d seen over the past few months.  The first time Karen and Marie had sandwiched him, he made himself small, pulling in his arms and tucking his hands between his legs.  Irene was glad things were more comfortable now.

            “You look like you are enjoying your harem” Irene remarked as he settled into place.

            “He wouldn’t know what to do with a harem consisting of the four of us.” Marie bumped Eddie with her shoulder adding a physical jab to her mocking.

            “I don’t know,” Karen remarked.  “He spends enough time with Alex.  He must have picked up some tips.”

            Eddie laughed at their teasing, something else Irene had noticed he had become more comfortable doing.  “I have some ideas of my own for a harem, but for right now, I’ll stick with Irene. I’ll keep you in mind for the day I do take on a few extra women.”

            “That will be the day after I take on a few extra boys.” Irene commented, arching an eyebrow as she cranked her window down.  Katherine had already done so, letting the last heat of the day escape from the blue interior. 

            Irene started the car while Katherine leaned over to flip the radio station to something halfway decent and they drove off into the night.   The car only had an AM radio, but there were a few good stations, all of them playing oldies of some sort.  When they couldn’t find anything good on the radio, one of them would break into song and the rest would join in.  They knew a lot of songs. 

            After winding through the flat of town to the foothills, Irene stopped at the tiny neighborhood grocery store.  It was past dark, but before curfew, and the clerk smiled, knowing what they were up to.  She’d seen it before, kids spilling out of cars, swarming the store and happily lining up to hand over their dollar and change.

            Purchase made, they piled back in and drove up the road, then turned and parked in the glare of the church parking lot near the hill.  They rolled out of the car and pulled their towels and bags out of the trunk.  Katherine, Karen and Marie headed off toward the hill immediately, but Eddie pulled Irene back for a kiss. Marie turned back to say something to Irene, and when she caught the couple with their tongues in each other’s mouths again, she let out a catcall that whipped Karen and Katherine’s heads around.

            “I think we should start a PDA jar for you two” Karen called back to them. “One dollar for regular kissing, three dollars if we can see tongue.”

            “Marie is even disgusted.” said Katherine, referring to Marie’s infamous lip locks with her rotating cast of boyfriends.

            “Can’t you just save it for after you drop us off tonight?” Marie added.

            Irene squirmed away from Eddie, smiling, grabbed her bag and caught up to her friends. “Maybe I should take the money from this jar and use it to pay for the gas while I drive you guys around.  How much longer until you get your licenses?”  Irene had been the chauffer for two years now, as she was in the last group of Idaho teenagers to receive a license at 14.  Her friends had to wait a very long two years to get theirs.

            “I’m good in four weeks.” Eddie loped along beside her.

            “Four months.” said Katherine.

            “Six” reported Marie

            “I’ve got more than a year.” sighed Karen.  She was younger than Irene and the age difference cropped up in frustrating ways.

            “Well then, I guess soon it will be Eddie doing the driving.” Irene commented.  “Then he really will feel like he has a harem.”

            Eddie’s eyes gleamed. “Yes.  I’m eager to see what the four of you will do when I’m hauling you around in my van.”

            “I have a feeling it will involve taking over the radio.” Marie suggested.

            “And a lot of loud singing.” Irene agreed.  “Is this car going to have an FM radio?”

            Eddie winced.  “Not if I can help it.”  The girls’ singing was enthusiastic and lusty, but not necessarily pitch-perfect.  There was a reason all of them chose band over choir, and the wavering tunefulness sometimes got on Eddie’s nerves.  It was one of the prices he paid for hanging out with Irene’s friends.

            Their sentences grew shorter as they ascended the hill. It was a smooth hike, though steep.  The lawn had been graded and trimmed and Irene always wondered if the groundskeeper had to buy special mowers to maneuver such a slope.  Halfway up, Karen stopped, gasping, and they paused, sweating and panting while they stared at the city lights below them and caught their breath.  There were others around them—they could hear the laughter through the darkness—but the hill had room enough for everyone. 

            “Do you think he minds?” Karen stared up at the house above them, brightly lit against the summer night.

            “All of us here on his front yard?” Katherine asked.  “Probably not.”

            “Then why do we always do this late at night?” Karen asked.  “I’ve never seen anyone Ice Blocking during the day.”

            “It’s more fun at night.” Eddie said as they resumed their journey. “It seems like we’re getting away with something.”

            When they reached a good starting point the five of them broke open their bags, and their blocks of ice slid onto the grass.  They expertly caught them with their feet, holding them in check as they shoved the empty bags into their pockets, careful not to litter, though Karen had lost a very nice ring last summer.

            Quickly, each person folded their towel into a small square that just covered the rectangle of ice and set it down on top.  They automatically lined up in a row and sat down on top of the towels, their feet holding them on the hill, though the ice wanted to slide away beneath them.  They would start at the same time.  Ice Blocking always called for a race.

“Ready?” Eddie asked looking up and down the line to check no one had an advantage.  Nods came back all around. 

“Set?” They leaned back.  When Eddie shouted “Go,” they lifted their feet and were off, sliding down the grassy hill of a billionaire potato magnate in the hot night of a desert summer.

            Irene knew that if she kept her feet up, she could make it all the way to the bottom, but she never could.  The glee of slipping down a hill as smoothly as if it were covered in snow while sweating in shorts and a t-shirt always translated into uncontrollable laughter and she always lost control, tumbling away from her ice as it continued to slide serenely toward the bottom.  If she was fast, she could bounce back up and catch the block before it had gotten too far from her.  It usually took her two or three tries to complete a single run, and she knew from experience she would never win the race.  Katherine always did, her taut athlete’s body controlling her descent, abs tight and laughter waiting until she reached the bottom, when she stood and turned to watch the rest of her friends slide in.  As Irene continued down the hill, half sliding, half rolling, she watched Karen barely beat Eddie, and Marie take fourth, before she herself rolled to the finish, convulsed with laughter as her ice slid away from her one last time.

            Eddie pulled her to her feet and the group wrapped their ice in their towels for the ascent, saving their hands from the cold blocks.  They made five or six runs before they headed to the car, sweaty from the climbs and with sore stomachs from the descents.

            Later, as she repeatedly combed through the moments of “Eddie & Irene,”; while she assembled the timeline of events, Irene was surprised to realize that Eddie had already made his decision by that night. She was soon to return to “she” and lose “us.” She had no idea.

Essay: So, are you?

“Are you a writer?”

It’s good to have an answer to that question if you attend a literary festival because people will ask you that question a lot.  I don’t really have an answer.  Am I a writer?

In the “yes” category, we have the evidence that I spend a lot of damn time writing.  I write letters, and postcards, I have written 67 essays, I write for my own blog which right now numbers around 1700 posts, or will be once I catch up to the posts I have yet to write.  I also wrote the first draft of a novel last year for NaNoWriMo and am working on another novel this year.  So yes.  Totally a writer.

On the no side?  No one actually pays me to write.  The sum total of my writer earnings consist of the $60.00 I won in college for a paper I submitted in my college’s academic writing contest.  I won first place for my research and summation about the German Peasant Revolt of 15-something.  Woo.

One of the things that I think makes Americans are boring is how focused we are on our careers.  When you are meeting someone for the first time and ask them what they do, they tell you what they are paid to do for the company that employs them.  Which, if they love their job and are excited to talk about it, is pretty cool.  But most people aren’t really interested in talking about their jobs.  I’m certainly not.  So I’ve taken to answering the question “What do you do?” with a question of my own:  “Would you like to hear what I do for pay, or what I enjoy doing?”  It’s much more fun.

But even when I talk about what I do for fun, I hesitate to bring up writing.  For one thing, I greatly enjoy writing for my blog, but I feel silly about the existence of the blog itself.  I think they’ve migrated over to the kind of uncool category.  And as for writing fiction, who hasn’t written a novel?  Thinking to the monthly breakfast I attend, at least four people there have written novels.  None of those novels have been published and really, does anyone read anymore?  I feel at times like writing is equivalent to manufacturing 35 millimeter film for film cameras.  There are people out there who still take pictures using film, but they are an ever dwindling bunch.

One of my roommates once told me the story of when she came to interview at the house we lived in together.  She asked the three roommates already in the house what they did and they answered, “Printmaker.” “Musician” “DJ”  It was only after she moved in that she learned that what they were paid for was “Temporary work,” “Housecleaning,” “Drug Dealing.”  I think of this story every time I think about claiming to be a writer. 

Maybe it’s the “new” factor that makes writing hard to claim. I’ve only been writing essays for two years and the fiction thing still feels very new.  Perhaps eventually I will be able to claim a small spot on the grand staircase of writers.  For now though I’ll keep it on the down-low.  An avocation, not a vocation.