Ex Post Facto

My 8th grade music class was particularly boisterous. The middle school was being renovated that year, so we were shoved in some kind of makeshift used-to-be superintendent's office? We had a first year teacher. I'll call her Miss L. One thing I liked about Miss L was that she started every day by playing a song, and we would journal about it--what instruments we heard, the mood, the tempo, etc. What I didn't like about Miss L was basically everything else.

That class was important to me because I don't remember having many friends in it. Most of the honors kids I was usually saddled with were in band. This was my time to experience what the rest of my peers were up to. Some key things I remember were getting up to do a presentation on my favorite musical artist--at the time a ska band--and a girl said I was probably going to talk about Dreamstreet, which is completely embarrassing because Dreamstreet was the dumb spin-off BSB made for teens two years too late. I had referenced the group and their "hit" once at a Girl Scout trip ironically. This chick did not get irony. I didn't know what irony truly was at the time, but I felt shamed for trying my hand at it. And now I go to satire school.

I also remember when I ran for class president a guy who ran opposite me asked his friend, "Are you going to vote for me?" He chuckled, "No dude, I'm voting for SNAP" (which was my team's ticket name). I thought that guy was pretty bold to make me the butt of a joke one foot from my seat, but I was weirdly not bothered. Despite the fact that that one dude got fewer votes than me, it was a daunting use of (ironically) irony. That jokester made a point to talk to me at our middle school reunion when we were seniors in high school. He asked if I was going to Harvard, and when I said no he was like, "Why not?! I thought for sure you'd go to Harvard." I googled him last year and the only hit was a police report from a DUI he got two summers ago.

So, Miss L. Kids were chattering and joking and goofing as usual in her class, and she said every time we misbehaved she was going to write a letter of "MUSIC" on the white board. So, we kept misbehaving, and by the end of class all five letters were up on the board. She then announced any day we made "MUSIC appear" we did NOT get a sticker on a chart. And if we filled the chart with stickers, we got candy.

"There are so many things wrong with this," I thought. 1. Kids should not be rewarded with candy. 2. Huge boxes of every kind of candy imaginable were available every single day in the cafeteria for 50 cents a bar. The prize for a month of perfect behavior was worth two quarters. 3. We had just learned about ex post facto in social studies class. It meant you're not allowed to make a law in retrospect. And that's exactly what Miss L. did. She explained the rules around her "good class" test after we had already failed. I raised my hand and said this. "We should get a sticker for today because what you just did violates ex post facto." She gave me the biggest, nastiest eye roll I had ever seen.

My reaction was, "I guess that's not how it works here. Or maybe I didn't understand the concept like I thought I did." But the classroom should be a just place, and I did understand. The eye roll, it haunts me. But in a good way. A way that reminds me it might be me who knows a thing or two.

Not Anybody's Job

It's kind of weird that it's not anybody's job to make you unafraid.

I dreamt about my fiction professor from college last night--a courage pusher. I haven't thought about her in a very long time. Not that she didn't play a huge part in the formative years of my writing education. She's just not on the mem rotation. But there she was, with her maroon lips and long grey hair. Big smile. She's a horrible liar. I could tell she hated what I was writing, but she found something, some nugget she could sort of rally behind. I wasn't asking to feel what I didn't deserve to feel. Just to feel unafraid.

So I guess if you want to be immortal, don't worry about making the great American masterpiece, or making legislation, or even making a baby. Just make people unafraid.

May 2010.

"There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them."--Andre Gide

Matters

When I go to bathroom in public washrooms I always kick down the lever with my foot, so I don't have to touch it. I learned the trick when I was 14 from a girl on my speech team. I have not talked to that girl in a decade. I still think of her probably 33% of the time I am flushing a toilet.

At summer camp I eavesdropped on two girls with braces and frizzy hair (signs of maturity from my fifth grade standpoint) while we played water polo in a shallow lake. One said, "You should never do anything for an award," and I still live by that.

In third grade our teacher gave our suckers as rewards. Her stipulation was that we never walk with them in our mouths without holding onto the sticks. She painted the scenario of a kid tripping and having the sucker ram into their throat. I have been scared to walk and sip through a straw since.

Pogo-Sticking with a Glass of Water

Last year I played Rosemary in Summer Brave. During Act II, Scene I, she pressures her boyfriend to marry her. It's a good scene. At one point Howard loses his footing in rhetoric and just answers, "Well..."
So, Rosemary says, "A well's a hole in the ground, Howard."

A few months later, I was in the pool locker room with a professor who had seen the play and had actually seen it as a little girl. Her mother had been Rosemary once upon a time. This professor said, "Good job. And I love that line. My family would say that all the time to each other for years: 'A well's a hole in the ground, Howard.'"

I thought it was especially interesting that they always said "Howard."


Jamin (who played Howard), Spring 2009

When I was a freshman in high school, my English teacher was explaining to us how mad he would get at his kids. He said, "When I was a kid I would always get in trouble for making mistakes, and I knew that when I grew up, I would never yell at kids for making mistakes! It's a mistake! How can you help it? But, now that I've got kids, it's like, 'Yeah, it's a mistake, BUT WHAT WERE YOU DOING POGO-STICKING WITH A GLASS OF WATER IN YOUR HAND?'"

This was funny to me, and it (obviously) has stuck with me. Good point. There are some mistakes you shouldn't make. Noted. At one point a few years ago I relayed the anecdote to my sister. Now we both say it. It's this really goofy super-high-context-bit of language. We'll be talking about someone completely unstable juggling too many responsibilities or someone overly emotional getting wrapped up into a dramatic social environment, we nod and say, "Pogo-sticking with a glass of water."