Bridentity

Two weeks before one's wedding one may experience a certain amount of nervousness. One may have dreams in which all of the above happen: the wedding dress is accidentally dyed green, a cat attacks the bride, the bride's house burns down, the bride's brother drives the bride's car into a lake as a joke, the bride becomes allergic to her lipstick while trying to say vows, an attic full of starving cats monopolizes the brides time and she misses the wedding, the bride falls into the lake, the bride's students show up randomly at the wedding and do annoying things, the starving cats are thrown in a giant dumpster against the bride's will, the reception dinner has giant tufts of hair in it.

Two things are clear. One, I have a perplexing issue with cats. Two, I am a little anxious.

It isn't surprising. In a sense, it's a big performance in front of people who, if you screw it up, will be around to make fun of you for it the rest of your life. In another, it's a photo shoot and the pictures are going to be all over the place for, again, the rest of your life. It's a big party that you HOPE people will remember fondly for, you guessed it, the rest of your life. Really it's that all of a sudden you keep ending sentences with "the rest of your life" and it's a bit unnerving. The only time I used that phrase before this was when I got a tattoo, and no one knows I have it unless I'm naked or wearing a particularly unfortunate outfit. Just I will forever be a person who got a tattoo, I will now forever be a married person. A whole new me.

Now I know that this is an exaggeration. I can hear people clucking their tongues and saying something about marriage completing your identity, not compromising it. Fine. I think that marriage probably will do that, actually. However, being a bride, near as I can tell, has nothing to do with being a wife. And so far, my Bridentity continues to surprise me.

First off, I never EVER thought I would be susceptible to the marketing machine that is American weddings. I avoided fancy invitations. I dodged an expensive, white dress. I borrowed stuff. I left the tables blank without placecards and centerpieces. Yet...it wore me down. Thanks to the information age, I don't have to tell anyone except Facebook that I am engaged, and marketers send me stuff via mail, email, pop up ads, phone...it's endless. At first I didn't care. I didn't even click on something that said, "wedding cake trends you'll love" or "we've got the secret to a perfect wedding day". Then slowly but surely I became intrigued. What wasn't I doing that other brides were? What was I going to forget?

They had me. My ass was ordering personalized chocolates within a week. I had checklists. I bought ribbons. Colors began to match. The more I planned, the more anxious I became. I had dreams about being trapped in a basement while the reception went on without me. Lost in a jungle getting eaten by bugs. The wedding takes place in my school's gym (which doesn't exist) and all the parents are there but none of my friends. I get ridiculed during the ceremony for lack of support for our troops.

It goes on and on and on.

One of the most exciting things for a bride, if you ask the internet, is changing her name. I had always insisted that I would keep my name. Recently, upon applying for our marriage license, I had to make it official. We drove to City Hall and held hands on our way into the building. That was sweet, but I had iced coffee, which gets cold, so I kind of wanted to let go in order to switch grips.

I've been to City Hall twice, not counting protests directly outside of it. The first time was when I lost my passport on the way to Germany. I kept thinking about that on the way over there. Was this marriage thing another instance of lost identity?

We walked into the giant zoo of a building, and needed directions. We felt weird asking. It was sort of like asking how to make out with someone. Like we were childish in our inability to get married without assistance. City workers make it easy to be unashamed, however, and barely acknowledge you while pointing to an escalator.

The registration area kind of reminded me of the Kentucky Derby; all of these lines leading to windows half covered with grates like city store fronts. I was betting it all on one horse. We scanned the signs. Registration: Births. Registration: Births. Registration: Births. Registration: Births. Registration: Births. Registration: Births. Registration: Parking clerk.

Hmm. The window for marriages was wedged between parking and birthing window number 1. We waited in line behind several people who seemed either very put out or just as confused as we were. The women behind the counter traded places, handed out papers and pointed to other windows without ever speaking or looking at one another. A bureaucratic ballet. When we finally arrived at our turn, we again felt strange.

"Uh, we want to get married."

She handed us a clipboard, made rapid x marks where we sign, and told us, "has to be in black ink. Bring it back when you're done."

I opted to fill in my portion first. I filled in the whole thing, excepting one spot. Was I going to keep my name? I didn't want his name, I wanted my name. But why was I hesitating? What was this antiquated bullshit doing in my brain?

I stared at the thing for a minute or so, doing an inner check in. My fiance was pacing and moving his coffee around and looking over my shoulder and checking his iPhone.

My inner self said, "you already bought the chocolates, don't let the machine change your mind on this one." So I didn't.

[braveheart voice]
You may take 49.95 for some lame chocolates, wedding machine, but you can't have my name!

3 a.m. blog

I had my last session with my therapist today. I have a therapist. Sometimes, when major life events come and go and they have yet to make themselves known on this blog, I feel like I've neglected something. Like a dog or a houseplant. One of the last things he, my therapist, told me was that my tendency to equate my "self" with my "work" was a little bit outside the norm, and that relating to people would be tough as long as I believed that everyone should define oneself in terms of one's job.

Hmm.

I'm conflicted in multiple ways on this one. First, how can I possibly WANT to relate to someone who spends 40 hours per week, minimum, doing something that isn't part of his/her identity? Two, if I make a living as a teacher, does that mean I'm not a writer? Sure, I write. I write the occasional blog and short story. Sure, my thought processes look like text on a page in my mind's eye. But, as I face the big three-zero approaching in only a matter of months, I have to wonder if the "writer" part of my identity isn't slowly dying.

I feel every day in terms of text. Usually, I have about six moments per day that seem to warrant narrative. Just before writing this I was sitting on my stoop, way past midnight, thinking about my identity. A skunk waddled across the neighbor's driveway toward me. I had had a lot of hummus and raw vegetables, which create a certain digestive imperative, and I raised one cheek and farted into the Boston night. The skunk ran in the other direction. I couldn't help thinking this was a naturally existing metaphor worth blogging about...but would I end up in front of the screen later? Or would I wash a few dishes, chuckle to myself, and end up in bed without typing a thing?

I dated a blogger once. A person who puts content on a blog five times per week or more. He asked me once, when I was trying to figure out whether or not a bit of content was worth putting out there for the "public", whether I was a writer or a blogger. I wasn't clear on the difference. He said that writers only let stuff out when it was ready; bloggers put stuff out without even spellchecking it. I said that I was a writer. Lately, I'm neither. It's past three a.m. now; I took a break to go for a bike ride around my neighborhood. It looks remarkably peaceful in the middle of the night.

I didn't spellcheck this, and I probably won't write anything else in weeks, except curriculum. Does that make me a blogger, a teacher, or a writer? I guess I should move past labels, but I'm all out of therapy sessions.

requisite "year in review" blog

Despite my lifelong battle with being quite ordinary, I'm going to do the banal, trite, ordinary "year in review" blog. Rather than the ever-tempting top 20 of 2008, though, I'm going to shoot for a stream-of-consciousness-brain-fart sort of thing. Let's see if you can make sense of it. It was a pretty crazy year.

2008 begins and I'm having an allergic reaction right next to the stack of espresso pods and people are expecting more champagne and dessert but fuck them and fuck their dessert and while I'm at it fuck waitressing I have a master's degree how could this happen well it seems like it isn't turning respiratory so I guess the pills are working and at least there's a cute boy waiting for me somewhere ok he's not waiting for me but I'm going there anyway the drunk drivers aren't too bad this year and his blankets are scratchy but warm January: month of total chaos last state of the union by that miserable war criminal prick I'll just read the blogs I can't stand to hear him talk Richard Rothstein says NCLB is dead in the water mild rejoicing at edaction February: stupid god damn giants ruin everything and my mother doesn't understand the concept of time zones nayad meets a man and goes to church which makes us all quite suspicious SUPER TUESDAY no dennis but barack okay and the NSA gets away with a bunch of bullshit spying state of the police state? March: Peace out Huckabee and your crazy Jesus horse! I go to an Ambassador's mansion and eat caviar with people who frighten me terribly hatred of the wealthy reaffirmed I still live in their neighborhood in a house full of crazy and also wonderful friends California sends word that my old love is heading back home, some unconscious gate cracks open April: I'm a fool, for sure, but the girls at edaction and I keep trying to save public education how ridiculous meanwhile we're starting to ignore the newscasters when they tell us people are dying in Iraq people die in Iraq everyday and so it musn't be news... May: things fall apart and come together at the same time my community organizer job sends me to a terrible conference lots of talking and very little doing but none of it matters much when I walk the same little circle out in Boston Common and fall stupid in love with the same guy I always fall stupid in love with over and over June: BABYPROOFED victory sweet victory I stay in bed for many hours afterward and feel a kind of relief that defies description, then I eat sushi and watch tennis on tv July: Venus, Serena, offshore oil drilling, impeach (go Dennis!) but it's the summer of BIKES I take my newly acquired ability to the streets and knock on wood don't get hit by any cars, move my stuff, again August: Obsessively watch the DNC coverage, China decides air pollution is worth fixing for photo ops, back to school but not before a camping trip, canoes on a pond and wonderfully terrible cups of coffee the smell of trees and dying fires, far away Georgia and Russia reopen wounds and Mark David Chapman still in jail John Lennon still dead September: Move my stuff, again, to our new place we're finally home, together, only took like 9 years, Sarah Palin shocks the world with just how dumb she is, my first ever Hub on Wheels and then school school school October: DEBATES, American taxpayers dole out 700 billion dollars so that wall street big wigs can still go on vacation and housing prices continue to fall people are forced from their homes, meanwhile we go to Maine easternmost point in the US take pictures of boats drink strong coffee long drive back grading papers in the passenger's seat Jean home from Korea, briefly November: day before the election students say they'll "kill themselves" if barack doesn't win, but weeks of knotty stomachs worth every second our 44th president wins and everybody feels alright, for a minute, about being American, I turn 28 and Bill makes everyone jealous with his roses December: Snow, finally snow sweaters ice scrapers school cancelled three straight days Bill turns 30 skis down mountains but I prefer the fireplace and old, crappy movies family family family and finally a chance to take a nap 2008 the year I got my way good bye idiot president hello handsome brilliant awesome president (we hope) and hello hello hello baby proofed body and the body it sleeps next to every night and misses all day long.

snowed

The best thing about being a teacher in New England is not the proximity to so many great institutions of higher learning where you may build your content knowledge and wear tweed. Nor is it the apple picking field trip, the general lack of environmental disasters, the ability to spew left wing rhetoric at your students without a single complaint.... no no. It is your governor on the radio, a full evening ahead of you, telling you to sit back, have a glass of wine, and just forget about going to work tomorrow.

The bliss ends there.

I hate to break this to all of you who are currently enjoying your reproductive rights, but the Bush administration has dealt a final blow to gender equality, human rights, etc. He hates that stuff!

I got this in the mail from my buddy Cecile Richards:

Minutes ago, President Bush's rule limiting the rights of patients to receive complete and accurate reproductive health information when they visit a federally funded health care provider was made official. And, unfortunately, it will take a great deal of work to reverse it — starting today. Please help.

We knew this was coming, of course. With your help, we've been fighting it for months. The rule is clearly a parting gift from Bush to the anti-choice fringe that supported him all these years.

Now, anti-choice medical staff can withhold information about abortion, birth control, and sex education from their patients. Facilities that receive family planning funding, like Planned Parenthood, will have to certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth control. For example, a doctor who opposes pre-marital sex could refuse to provide a prescription or even information about emergency contraception to an unmarried woman.

This is the most frightening thing I've heard in a long time. As if unwanted pregnancies weren't enough of a problem, it's going to get a hell of a lot harder for women to prevent them. Nay, it's going to get a hell of a lot harder to even get INFORMATION about BIRTH CONTROL. What?! Beyond that, this will disproportionately affect women with limited access to information (poor women, English language learners, you know, the vulnerable people who Bush loves to shit on.)

I debate this issue with my students all the time. Many of these girls have been, as it were, totally snowed. They learned to believe, at some point very early in their lives, that getting pregnant is a sacred gift from god and...well I'll put this in their words:

"If you open your legs, you have to pay the price."

Three things:

1. How sad to be the child whose entire life is payment for something the mother eternally regrets.

2. How much sadder to be the girl who has been so beaten down by society that she actually believes not only that she is powerless, but that she should be.

3. Okay, so you believe "life is sacred" - but should you really advocate for those beliefs to be legislated? Because the people who are stirring this pot you're in don't give a flying poop about life being sacred (or at least not military prisoners or Iraqi citizens or death row inmates...those lives aren't sacred). They want to keep power in the hands of men, and taking decision making power out of the hands of women is the quickest way to do that. The life is sacred thing is just a convenient slogan these power mongers capitalize on to advance their anti-woman, anti-parenting, anti-medical ethics, anti-American agenda.

What a great trick you've pulled, you murdering sexist bigot war criminal. I wish that shoe hit you right in the fucking smirk.

Crap! Is it August?!

Besides being a reminder that I’m one of the several hundred thousand Bostonians about to move on good ole September 1^st, the arrival of August is always moderately depressing. One begins to reevaluate one’s summer. There have been exactly zero trips to the beach, days off, picnics, one nasty tan line from a day of biking but otherwise still Scottishly pale… And of course every new month delivers the sinking, cold realization that I have criminally neglected my blog yet again.

I’ll go ahead and sum up all that I missed in…

Top Five Things I Totally Meant to Blog About Last Month

Or

My Summer Thus Far

#5 PROOF that my asshole coworker actually is an asshole

Oh most desired gift at last you’ve arrived. For the entirety of my employment I have known that this woman (referred to in previous blogs as Jabba the Hut) is an asshole. Like the worst kind of asshole, she manages somehow to evade what should be a companywide intervention based on the universal consensus that she is so egregiously awful that it is a violation of state safety regulations to force other employees to work anywhere near her. Rather, she manages to win the favor of certain administrators who, uh, clearly find their asses and elbows indistinguishable from one another.

What she does is the following:

We’re in community meeting, a weekly gathering of all students and staff wherein all may make announcements to the entire school and student leadership may put various things to a vote and blah blah blah. At this particular meeting one student, who had not attended the graduation ceremony, was receiving an award that came with a small scholarship. She was sitting with her case manager (our school has counselors assigned to each student) and both ladies were jokingly grabbing the scholarship check back and forth from one another during the rest of the meeting. Jabba the Hut notices this playful act and bellows, to a roomful of people who HADN’T necessarily noticed what was going on, “Whoops! Hang on to that check, you gotta watch these Puerto Ricans every second!”

Pause. Digest.

Now, if a student had yelled some racially charged statement like that in the middle of a meeting, I would stop everything and process the statement with everyone. I am constantly doing the work of getting the students to reflect on their own racialized statements and beliefs so that, someday, we might be in a place where those kinds of statements aren’t even thought, let alone screamed at the top of one’s lungs.

But what was I to do when a staff member did it?

Apparently I was to drop the dry erase marker I had in my hand, and say, “I can’t believe you just said that.”

Everyone tittered awkwardly and things moved right along. How the hell are we going to get the kids to start reevaluating their beliefs about race if the teachers make these kinds of statements?!

Silver lining: now everyone knows she’s an asshole.

#4 Culture Clash: Bikes v. Cars

I’ll admit right away that I used to loathe bikers. Those idiots weaving in and out of lanes wearing pants three sizes too small and flipping everyone off. But now having seen Boston drivers from behind the handle bars, I would flip everyone off too if I wasn’t so scared of riding without holding on… Car drivers’ sense of superiority and imagined entitlement to the entire road is at worst dangerous and at best really fucking irritating.

I had a run-in with just such a gas guzzling enemy of the planet mid-July while on a leisurely bike ride through Watertown. I don’t know how many of my several thousand dedicated readers are familiar with Watertown, but it’s a pretty mellow place with many residential areas. My boyfriend and I were taking a left off one residential street onto another, waiting in the middle of the road for oncoming cars to pass, just as a motor vehicle would have done. The car behind us begins laying on horn, yelling, “Get out of the road!”

This poor soul thought that only cars had the right to use the roads that all we taxpayers pay for. As I often do, I responded to potential conflict with grace and respect for another point of view…

OR

I screamed a string of obscenities in the direction of the speeding car as it headed toward a red light one hundred feet away. My better half responded the way a person as level headed as I never would, and chased after the car. The following interaction ensued:

My better half (MBH): Hey you really didn’t need to yell at us

Patty Petroleum (chewing French fries): Get out of the road

MBH: You get out of the road; I have just as much right to be on it as you do

PP: You have the sidewalk

MBH: Sidewalks indicate their purpose in their name and bikes aren’t allowed on the sidewalks anyway

PP: Whatever

MBH: So it’s okay for you to scream at people, but it’s not okay for me to-

Light turns green. Petroleum Patty wields her enormous arm to form a familiar gesture with its sausage fingers and yells the following brilliant statement out the window:

PP: GET A CAR!!!!!

Well we hadn’t thought of that! Thanks, Patty Petroleum! I mean, it’s really hard to eat all my meals out of a Styrofoam box while riding my bike! I could just GET A CAR! It’s been such a drag being able to park right next to my destination rather than patronize my friendly neighborhood garage three blocks away! I should buy a CAR! I really hate fitting into the same jeans I’ve worn since my early twenties, I need to gain weight so I can rationalize buying new clothes. I’ll get a CAR!

….of course, I do own a car. But I’m nice about it. Eat me, Petroleum Patty!!!

#3 JUST IN CASE YOU STILL DON’T THINK MY COWORKER IS AN ASSHOLE

Oh boy is this one priceless. We are in a staff meeting, headed by our boss who is African American. Jabba the Hut is taking the notes, and says…

“How do you spell your name again?”

Our boss, who has worked with us for three months now, replies.

Jabba says, “Oh that must be one of those made up black names.”

… … …

I’m just going to leave that hanging…but trust that it did not make it into the meeting minutes.

#2 Dante’s Sixth Circle of Hell

Otherwise known as the Boston Children’s Museum. A cesspool of diapers, whining, snotty sleeves, untied shoelaces, frantic parents, disobedient little persons darting around with no regard for passers by. When I face my ultimate comeuppance, it will be there I am sent.

During summer school we take the students on field trips every Friday. Since most of our students have children themselves, we take one trip on which students may bring their families. The amount of hatred I harbor for this annual event cannot be properly expressed in words. See, a group of teenagers gathered together, regardless of whether they are playing the role of parent or student, behaves like a group of teenagers. So when you combine a group of teenagers with a group of sub-3 year olds plus cell phones plus all the social pressures and conflicts and norms of school you get:

“Oh hell no she won’t. I am not playin’ with that ho- ”

“Don’t say ho in front of my kid.”

“Why hasn’t he met his momma?”

“Bitch I am not PLAYING with you.”

“Baby get out of the ROAD get out of the fucking road get the fuck out of the road.”

“Yo your baby is mad cute!”

“I’m at school. I don’t know a museum. I told you don’t be chirpin’ me at school….hello? Motherfucker I KNOW you didn’t hang up on me.”

“Hello? Did you just-”

“HellOOOO?”

“Where the bathrooms at?!”

“Where’d Miss Kelly go?”

Miss Kelly went straight to the museum shop, where she sat and read a book for the entire day.*

*Conscience alert: If I were a different blogger, I might have talked about observing my students in their roles as parents and how a palpable sense of community made the chaperons smile as the students encouraged their kids to play together. And I might have also mentioned the moments of unguarded, unselfconscious curiosity and wonder while they learned with their kids at various exhibits…but we can’t have that messing up my reputation.

#1 Unprotected Sex

Second only to the Children’s Museum as a reaffirmation of my decision to barricade these baby tubes with two coils of steel, this delightful endeavor is ill-advised for most of you poor saps but gee golly if it isn’t making fine and dandy my vacationless summer vacation. High five!

eating wasabi peas in rapid succession

Depending on your goals, this could be either a good or bad thing. Since I had no blocked nasal passages to clear, it's not really helping me out much.

I am what the kids call "freaking out." Not the immediate kind of "holy shit I just got hit by a bus" freaking out. Rather this is a slow, painful build up to freaking out crescendo.

You see, for many years I longed to live alone. For anyone who has endured years of roommatedom, as I have, the reasons for this are clear. There are the roommates who eat your food. The roommates who constantly remark that your living habits belie an upbringing "in a barn." The roommates who actually WERE raised in a barn. The sex party throwers. The suicide attempters. The non payers back of loaned cable bill money when you never watch the goddamned ass box in the first place. The fuckers of your ex boyfriends. I've shared mail slots with them all.

Thus, when both of my roommates left last week, and my house was to be my own for nearly two months, I believed myself embarked upon a journey of peace and joy!

As Howard Dean would say: "That turned out not to be true."

Due to overwhelming popularity, this is actually the first day I've had zero social engagements and zero people waiting for me at the house when I arrived home from work. Thus, today was the first day in the life of a person who lives alone.

Already, I blog.

I walked in the door, put down my stuff, and kind of just stood there. There was no Nayad running down the stairs at high speeds, telling me why it would be so great if we all had cocks, just for one day. Or Gina, offering me a nice big slice of salami without looking up from her computer. There was no food cooking and no crisis to deal with. I could do whatever I wanted, as loudly as I deemed necessary. I could make a mess. I could play with myself on the kitchen counter. I could...

Actually, hang on a sec...

...

Or I could eat whatever was in the fridge without worrying who it belonged to. I only had two responsibilities: clean the bathroom upstairs and put out the recycling.

When you have eight hours to complete two tasks that will take about 45 minutes, something terrible happens. They become impossible. I have often wondered why I keep my life so busy, but I think it is because that if I had too much free time I would never get anything done.

Itinerary: Day One Without Roommates

5pm: stare at the entry way
5:15 pm: enter the house
5:23 pm: walk upstairs
5:27 pm: put stuff down
5:28 pm: sit down
5:28 pm: look out the window, breathing
5:39 pm: check email
5:40 pm: check email
5:47 pm: turn on public radio
...proceed to spend two hours getting overinformed...
7:47 pm: realize you are starving
7:48 pm: frantically run around the kitchen assembling a dinner that could feed four
8:15 pm: wrap up leftovers
8:25 pm: think about putting out that recycling, and the upstairs bathroom
8:32 pm: check email
8:33 pm: listen to the counting crows for an hour
9:33 pm: think about the recycling, mentally table the bathroom issue for another day
9:41 pm: feel guilty about neglecting your blog
9:42 pm: procrastinate blogging by putting out the recycling
9:53 pm: put on pajamas
10:00 pm: blog with a sad face, eating wasabi peas in rapid succession

Sigh. I miss my little overeating, dirty talking, mess making, food stealing, loud screwing, leg humping, shoe borrowing, endless trips to the grocery store buddies. Ohhh the sorrow.

I tried to think of another title for this post, but "the pope is an asshole" is really the only option

The Pope Is An Asshole


The head of everyone's favorite pedophilia club flew from Rome to the U.S. today. I wasn't going to say anything about it, because I don't give a hell, but then he went and said some stupid shit about which I couldn't possibly remain silent. When commenting about the oh so mysterious and suddenly discovered tendency for priests to rape small boys, he said:

"It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the church in general and for me personally that this could happen"

A great suffering for...for YOU?! A great suffering for the church? You unbelievable asshole. I am continually shocked by the catholic church's complete and total refusal to offer an apology to the victims, and in this case, to even an acknowledge that they are the ones who have suffered. The church in which he is the head cheese abuses over 5,000 kids (that we know about) and he tells reporters that he is suffering.

Mr. Pope expressed his personal remorse about the abuse scandal, which up to this point he hadn't really given much attention, and said the church is "increasing its efforts to keep pedophiles out of the priesthood."

You asshole. You total complete asshole! "Increasing?" This implies that they were like kinda sorta maybe gonna figure some way to alleviate this suffering for the church when they got around to it, but now they are really going to start doing something about it. Increasing? Whatever efforts, which of course don't include letting priests marry or (god forbid) be female, should have already been at maximum.

Since 2002 over five thousand victims have come forward, and those are only the people who have braved exposure in a culture that socializes its children to feel shame when they are abused. Not to mention what that experience must have been like in their own families and church communities. I hope every single one of these five thousand people didn't have to hear the horrifically insensitive remarks of their "spiritual leader."

What's New Here?

Hmm. Same messy desk. Same backpack. Same coffee mug. Wha...is that...is that a bicycle?

It's true. Hal the Hyundai has taken a few days off this week so that I can try my hand at the cool kid commute. Just when you thought, "Wow, Kelly can't possibly get any cooler" look what I go and do?!

The coolness of the whole adventure was mitigated by the fact that I had to, as an adult, take LESSONS to learn how to ride a bicycle. In a very Cantabrigian manner, I hired a private tutor. This was less because I felt the quality of a highly paid private tutor would far exceed learning from any old regular American who learned to ride a bike as a child and more because I was not about to embark on this very uncool journey under the tutelage of someone I had to see ever again.

Enter: The Bicycle Whisperer.

Susan the Bike Teacher calls herself the Bicycle Whisperer, and that's exactly what she is. I was a wild, untamed klutz of equine proportions and for forty bucks an hour she guaranteed she could get me to stay upright on two wheels. I drove to Somerville for my first lesson, skeptical. I parked on the street outside of her house, one of those huge old Somerville paint peelers that, to me, always look homey and welcoming. Still, I'm apprehensive and practically tip toe to the front door. Considering I found her on the internet, the chances that this woman might strangle me in her basement with a bike chain are slightly higher than normal. As in any dangerous situation, I just tell myself: "If you survive, think of the story you could write!"

Alas, no bike chain murder here.

Susan answers the door and gets me a parking pass so Somerville's finest won't charge me extra for the lesson. She is the definition of east coast baby boomer, living out her golden years with wild gray hair, attending every available leftist talk and rally in town, and trying to save Africa. She lives with roommates; she started her own organization in Mali; she makes a modest living teaching people how to ride bicycles. She's basically super awesome.

As a teacher, it can be hard to assume the role of the student. Luckily, the bicycle whisperer is about as comforting as a womb, and I immediately trust her with my safety. We walk to the barn, where the bicycle collection lives. We maneuver through the maze and extract my special learning bicycle. The process of building character through humiliation begins here. If anyone videotaped this I would murder them with a bike chain in Susan's basement. The bike is a special machine for special people. Literally. Its center of gravity is very low, the pedals are wrapped with soft fabric, and the rider sits totally upright with feet slightly out in front rather than right underneath. For me, the padded pedals are by far the funniest part. Moving on to: wardrobe.

Susan wraps me and pads me and covers me in so many articles of safety gear that I feel a weird combination of invincible and incredibly ridiculous. It feels like I could just dive into the pavement without getting hurt. Which is great, because at this point I'm pretty sure I am destined to do just that.

Through the streets of Somerville we march with our bikes. People smile at us because they think Susan is volunteering her time for some organization that teaches the mentally handicapped to ride bicycles. Little do they know, she is charging the mentally handicapped forty dollars an hour.

[[real time check in: I am at my desk; it is 7:15 am. Lessons for the day are planned, and I am free to blog. As I have mentioned, my school is located beneath a homeless shelter. Today in the room above me there is a child screaming at the top of its lungs. Again. I. Hate. This. Child. Judge me if you want to, but I do. I hate it. I mean, I don't really like any children until they are old enough to drive. But this child...ohhhhh this child.]]

So we arrive at a large abandoned lot adjacent to a basketball court. It is on a slight incline. We walk the bikes to the far corner at the top of the incline. This is what my life has done to me: a woman I met on the internet sends me down the hill on my bike when I am 27. What the fuck, parents?!

Offering all manner of supportive words, Susan takes me through step by step. By some miracle, I don't fall and it really doesn't seem that hard. Except turning. I still can't really turn. But that's another blog entirely.

She has me practice signaling, changing gears, etc. etc. calling at the top of her lungs from the center of the lot, "Left turn!" "Emergency stop!"

All of this is made exponentially worse when two young men decide they are going to play basketball. I am basically an adolescent male when it comes to the opposite sex. I cannot be expected to behave rationally or devote my attention to anything else when there are boys around. It's a sickness and I've got it. So here I am wrapped up like the Michelin Man on the short bus bike and there are male twenty-somethings playing basketball right next to me. I learn that I cannot yet look over my shoulder at a boy while trying to steer a bike. Horrible horrible cruel stupid world!!

I graduate to the bike path. This amounts to walking through Davis Square with the bikes until we hit the path, thus increasing the potential of being recognized by someone I will have to see again. Still, I am operating in my "I've decided to do this" mode, which means that I will ride the godforsaken idiot bike until my ass bleeds if that's what it takes to learn how to not fall off of it.

Fortunately, riding a bike is not nearly as difficult as I have imagined and my ass, while rather sore these days, has not bled.

The bike path is basically an interactive obstacle course. There are all sorts of moving, unpredictable things and people that you have to avoid hitting. I narrowly missed a family of four, and yelled at them to make sure and teach their kids young or...well or just look what would happen to them!

That being said, the bicycle whisperer felt that after one lesson, I only needed practice and did not have to take another lesson. While I had a pang of separation anxiety just thinking about mounting one of the two-wheeled death traps without her womb-like presence to soothe me, I was willing to save the forty bucks.

Since then I've bought a bike and commuted to work a few times, but I've gotta go shape the minds of the future and will have to write about that later. It involves less padding and way more bone chilling moments of pure terror.

how the other half gives

"If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich....


...It ain't that big. The whole United States ain't that big. It ain't that big. It ain't big enough. There ain't room enough for you an' me, for your kind an' my kind, for rich and poor together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat."

It's not just that John Steinbeck is a huge pimp. It's also that rich people are the devil. I can't help it - I don't like them. They freak me out. Unfortunately, I am cursed with a particularly discerning palette. Thus, when uber-rich people invite me to dinner, I can't say no. On Tuesday I was representing my boss at a house that could swallow up the trailer from whence I came seventeen times over. I walked over with my iPod blasting Bob Dylan singing about a dead hobo. The jazz trio could be heard from the courtyard. Cheek-kissing ladies funneled through the doorway. I stood at the edge of the drive in my favorite blue sneakers, a little post-welfare ball of anxiety. I hate these people. But I want to eat their food.

The entry way is clogged with activity. A frantic young woman repeats "May I take your coat" to the air, her arm outstretched toward no one in particular. She takes my coat and points to a table covered with alphabetized name tags. This young woman has the perfectionism disease big time. Her pearls sit exactly one quarter inch above her neckline and if you somehow threatened the sanctity of this exquisitely planned event, she would eat you for breakfast.

And so begins the excruciating "mingle" hour. To me, mingling is drinking wine in the corner and mocking people. This is delightful with a partner, but alone it just looks crazy. I stand there with my wine, not eating, staring at people in shifts, leering just long enough to make them uncomfortable. One woman accosts me.

"Oh hello, dear. I thought I saw you walk by the house, and I said to myself 'well she looks like she would be coming here, why would she walk by?' and now here you are."

I say, "Yeah, I was listening to music and I hate to stop mid-song."

"Oh! Isn't that wonderful, sounds like you've got your priorities straight."

I'm so bad at this. I have nothing to say to this woman. I gulp Fume Blanc.

"So, tell me dear, what do you do with yourself."

I tell her what I do: Teach. She cocks her head. Then I mention my employer's name.

Within seconds there is a flurry of Burberry and Chanel; I am engulfed by five old ladies. "Ohhhhh you work for him? How iiiiiiis he. It has been tooooo looooong. Oh you must tell him I say hello. Oh you are so lucky to be working with him. It must be just fabulous."

All of a sudden, I exist.

They poured upon me stories of the late 1960s, when they met my boss and fell in love with his work. I offer words of admiration for his work, looking into my wine glass, which is looking mighty low. They hand me cards and tell me to make sure to pass those on to him and flutter away as a unit. Existence by association. Blissful, as you might imagine.

Alone again. Mingle hour is almost up; I have eaten exactly nothing. The furniture looks like a museum collection. The art on the walls is old and represents an obnoxiously vast cultural diversity. I feel like I might break something.

Along comes the Ambassador, tinkling a bell. She holds it up over her head and motions for us to gather elsewhere. She herds us into the largest room, we moo obey. We sit facing a podium. I take a chair next to a sleeping cat. The Ambassador tinkles her way to the front. She has a microphone - it's time for introductions. She instructs us to speak about ourselves, and passes it to her left. It is five people away.

I look at the cat. The cat looks at me.

The five before me are presidents and founders of various philanthropic outfits. They kept saying, "By day, I'm an attorney. By night and weekend, I run this or that organization that I started. We help 'the communities.'"

What communities, exactly? Certainly not the ones we all live in.

Anyway, I'm struck by the sudden presence of a commonality: We all have more than one job. I will hand that to these rich people. They are really busy giving small fractions of their fortunes to "the communities."

I stammer through some mildly humorous thing about teaching. Then I mention, again, my boss whose name makes everyone go, "Ahhhhh." The Ambassador winks at me.

The microphone passing takes a significant amount of time. As it nears the end people are either more comfortable or more drunk, because the two sentence intro turns into paragraphs and jokes and commentary. Most entertaining are the high school students invited to represent their schools. They are perfectly adolescent, and say funny things. Two of them are black, and this pleases the crowd immeasurably. Oh look how integrated our little party is.

After the introductions and a few longer speeches by guests of honor, the Ambassador talks about raising millions of dollars through parties like this for great organizations that support the arts in education in Massachusetts. Then she says, "Because I only invited rich people!" Everyone laughs. "Like me!" Laughs.

Oh. How we chuckled.

Then she goes on to say that in "this very room" Frederick Douglass and other community leaders of the past gathered and plotted against oppression and inequality. Everyone gets reverent, breathing in the space.

Yeah. I'm sure this is just how Frederick pictured the future. We have fabulous parties to raise some money to put a year's worth of art and music programming in the urban schools because otherwise "those kids" wouldn't get any. Nice work America.

Internet Puberty

My sentiments exactly.

Listen everyone. All five of you. Two days ago I used blog as a verb. I have been known to show Youtube videos in my classroom. I edited something on Wikipedia last week. Things are happening that I don't entirely understand...like when changing in gym class suddenly became a thing of horror.

But just like when these two perfectly shaped behemoth enchantresses began to grow on my chest in fifth grade, I am coming to accept the fact that the internet can be useful. Given my age, I SHOULD be one of the kids who grew up right alongside the internet. But I didn't even have cable television until age 9 or 10. A computer?! A computer is on the list of things we requested as children, sure. And it met my mother's only response to inquiries about material possessions. She would throw her head back and bellow, "You can't always get what you want...but if you try sometimes..." and raise her eyebrows. We would stare back, forced to glumly admit that we had what we needed.

When I was a teenager I could walk a mile and a half to my best friend's house, and she had the internet. But she also had a pool. So I squandered my only pre-adulthood chance to get acquainted with this...this "internet" for the sweet cool chlorine bath out back. We spent entire summers on floats shaped like alligators, eating sandwiches made from white bread and mustard. At night, the neighborhood convened in giant games of capture the flag. I never had to go home and I never had to go on the internet. It was perfect.

Thus, I went to college having used email once or twice and able to type. I sailed through college as a writing major, researching the depths of my own imagination. Sinking into the glorious world of fiction. All my papers were composed on collections of loose leaf paper, napkins, in the margins of other books. I would gather them up, spread them out on a table at the library, and type them in one shot. My thesis was written almost entirely at a dusty old man's bar three doors down from the library. I took to drinking red wine and letting the neighborhood regulars listen to late-night paragraphs of my work. This sort of madness suited my college identity rather well. There were people around who thought I was a crazy Luddite. There were the "media studies" kids, who to me were just as crazy as the theater arts kids. Their art wasn't my art and I wasn't interested in being anything other than a writer. I couldn't understand what the hell was so interesting about the computer. I could spend six weeks in a tent with nothing but a copy of Babylon, Revisited and not get bored. There were whole worlds in single sentences, what the hell did you need a computer for?!

Then I went to grad school. Oh fuck. These people get their research on. Here, a computer becomes a necessary tool. Syllabus: online. Class discussions: online. Test results: online. Okay, okay. I give. I purchased a computer. An adorable little laptop. It plays music; it plays movies; I can send email from the toilet. These are useful, enjoyable things.

HOWEVER I still did not really grasp the extent to which people engaged with this "internet." I thought I did. But I did not.

There is a bunch of knowledge out there that seems ubiquitous. I take great pleasure in being ignorant of most of it. People magazine is a collection of beautiful strangers; I know nothing about Hollywood and all that noise. But this is the conscious, deliberate result of watching almost zero movies and refusing to own a television. Recently, I have been blindsided by a whole other world of things to which I have been blind. Perhaps you are familiar with the website whose charming assault on grammar involves photographed cats. Until recently, I knew only the "Hang in there Baby" cat. Apparently, cats and captions have been married for some time on the internet and I had no idea. These cats are everywhere. Literally everyone knew about this except me. As it is with any new knowledge, I am starting to notice references to these grammatically horrifying pictures all over creation. I feel I have joined some other realm. I have moved to the lunch table where the girls talk about periods and boys and shaving their legs instead of...of...whatever we talked about before that. I have got internet pubes. And with them comes all the uncertainty and weirdness of that first real bout with adulthood in grade school. The internet awkward phase. iAcne.

Thanks to my workplace, my status as computer pubescent is paradoxical. No matter how tech-inept I may be, simply by virtue of my twentysomethingness and my coworkers' babyboomerness, I am The Resident Computer Genius. Countless are the times I have heard: "Kelly, you're good at computers..." followed by a request to, say, explain why the machine was suddenly "typing in only capital letters." My love for learning is second only to my love for knowing things my coworkers don't, so this works out for all of us.

This is a recurring theme with me, this being dragged into my generation. At a sleepover in grade school I remember sleeping on some girl's New Kids on the Block sheets wondering, self-consciously, "Who the hell are these guys?" When my girlfriends were making mixed cds I was still pushing the speakers of my turntable up to a taperecorder, recording all my Beatles albums onto cassettes. At a birthday party when everyone went to see Ace Ventura Pet Detective, I left them and watched Mrs. Doubtfire by myself. I identified with middle aged divorcees, it seems. I watched The Breakfast Club for the first time three years ago, yet I owned a copy of Gone with the Wind by eighth grade. I denied being a member of my own generation.

This has made for a great time in adulthood! Two years ago I started listening to Radiohead and Pearl Jam. They are GREAT! While everyone else who grew up in the eighties actually GREW UP IN THE EIGHTIES, I created a little world for myself and grew up in the sixties and seventies. Looking back, this was a smart decision on my part. So, now I'm using blog as a verb. One thing is for sure, though, I will retain my grammatical prowess, and resist the temptation to find subject verb disagreements cute.

I Don't [Expletive] Think So

Of course you realize, fair sister, that this means war.