If the baldness didn't convince me, this week I learned that I am, in some people's perspectives, an old man. By some people I mean jaded teenagers with better things to do than spend their summer on a college campus.
On Monday I started teaching three classes of 15-16 year olds in this program at UT called Project GRAD. What happens is groups of students with a C average or better from the under performing schools in Knoxville come to campus for two weeks and take college prep classes. At the end of the program, each one of them gets a $4,000 college scholarship. That's a big deal, and I'm ecstatic to be a part of it. I've always been for the under dog, because in a lot of ways I've always been an underdog, and I'm glad I get to help these kids on their way towards becoming somebodies, even if only for a measly two weeks. We all have to start somewhere.
I made the decision last year to have my freshman students call me by my first name. I've been Tim for nearly a quarter of a century, and I thought it would be awkward changing to Mr. Sisk. I knew the time was coming, but I wasn't trying to rush it along. Mr. Sisk just seems so old sounding. That's who my daddy is, for crying out loud, and my daddy's pretty agey. But I decided for this program I'd be Mr. Sisk. It wasn't much of a decision really. Monda (The Goddess of Teaching Teenagers) told me long ago that when I start teaching, especially at this age level, I have to be Mr. Sisk in order to maintain distance and command respect. So my decision was made. I amped up my ethos by introducing myself as Mr. Sisk, a teacher in the UT English department. I left out the fact that I'm a peon Master's student with very little experience. They need not know my life history, right? Besides, it would ruin the Mr. Sisk Effect.
I gotta tell ya, I think I like Mr. Sisk better than I like Tim. Mr. Sisk is poised and professional, but he still really cares about his students. He's not afraid to keep misbehavers after class and let them know that giggling and hitting (yes, I've had some hitters, even at 16) aren't going to make it through his class if the behavior continues. He's not afraid to scold, when need be, and he's not preoccupied with whether or not a group of rambunctious teenagers think he's cool. He's a teacher and he knows, in teenagers' opinions, teachers are never cool the first week of class. But if they command respect and show that they care, students will learn something, and they'll be more prepared for college. And in his opinion that's pretty damned cool.
Mr. Sisk is personable and interesting. Despite his frumpy attire, which he selects with the express intent of making himself appear older and thus increasing his ethos, he's thoroughly intrigued by his students, laughs at their jokes, reads and comments on their poetry after class (a sure fire sign that he's got them under his spell), and he always maintains a positive disposition even when presented with challenges. He's shaping up to be like the best teachers Tim ever had, and the type of teacher he wants to become.
I gotta tell you, the Mr. Sisk Effect is addictive. I might even have to bring him out again next semester with the freshmen.
Oh, and FYI, despite the challenges, I LOVE my students. They keep me on my toes, but damn if they aren't bright, funny, and a helluva lot of fun.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Rocket Ship Mazes and Sunburned Scalps
Add this to the Perils of Premature Baldness list: Yesterday I volunteered to wrangle children through an inflatable rocket ship maze at the Children's Festival of Reading sponsored by the Knox County Public Libraries. My dear friend Matt told me about the festival at Happy Hour with the Boys (Monda, I've assumed your capitalization habits) on Thursday night at the sushi bar. He got roped into volunteering because his mom is the children's librarian at the downtown branch. I volunteered because I heard the words "play," "children," and "moon bounce." Honestly, in my past life I was a kindergarten teacher. It was great fun, but very sunny. By the end of the day, I was red faced with a sunburned scalp. Anyone got any aloe vera?
The sunburn was worth it though, if only for two reasons, listed in order of coolness. 1. Matt's Mom and Dad (nicest people you ever want to meet) took us for beer and pizza afterwards. 2. A little boy no more than six came through the inflatable rocket ship maze's rear exit, looked up at Matt and me wide-eyed, and exclaimed, "There's a dead astronaut in there!"
Kids DO say the darndest things.
The sunburn was worth it though, if only for two reasons, listed in order of coolness. 1. Matt's Mom and Dad (nicest people you ever want to meet) took us for beer and pizza afterwards. 2. A little boy no more than six came through the inflatable rocket ship maze's rear exit, looked up at Matt and me wide-eyed, and exclaimed, "There's a dead astronaut in there!"
Kids DO say the darndest things.
Friday, May 30, 2008
The Man I Have Not Become
One thing I know for sure: The Lord put my Daddy on this earth to be a daddy. It's taken me a while to come to that conclusion, but I think it's right, and I'd prefer not to be contradicted. For a long time, especially when I was a know-it-all teenager, I didn't know what to do with the man. Bald head, rotten teeth, incapable of uttering a sentence only once, my daddy the chronic repeater just didn't jibe with what television and children's books led me to believe a father was supposed to look like. He chews tobacco and paces the floors when he's talking to you. He has never said I love you before in his life. I'm nearly 100 percent sure of it, and that used to bother me endlessly until I came up with my Theory of Predestined Roles. At least that's the working title.
The thing my daddy is best at--and he's good at lots of things--is being a father. Not the handsomely trim, emotionally demonstrative soccer coach dad you'd see on Desperate Housewives (a DILF, if you will). He's a born caregiver. He doesn't have to look the part because he invented it. He doesn't have to say "I love you" because his body screams it with every muscle spasm and joint pop.
My daddy ran my bath water for me until I was ten years old. I think it hurt his feelings when I, in my decade's worth of grandiose wisdom, told him I would no longer need his services. He obliged me without an argument, but he was right there when, just after he left, I cranked up the hot water and yelped from the scald. Daddy cared about me, and he didn't want me to burn myself from the water that got much too hot as it traversed its way topsy-turvy through the persnickety pipes of our double-wide trailer. He cared about me enough to let me burn myself, though, and learn caution. Learn that maybe I still needed him after all.
He was at each of Jeffrey's home football games, and at most of the away ones, too, unless they were too far south in Mississippi, so far he couldn't make them in time after he got of work. Daddy loved watching those boys fumble on the field, particularly his own son, my brother, the 2nd string whatever who got little field play. Despite his love of sports and my disinterest in them, Daddy was there for all my adolescent rites of passage: choir concerts, school plays, countless academic awards ceremonies. Even the Momma I Adore can't say that much.
I took a composition class at Mississippi University for Women the summer before my senior year of high school and wrote a personal essay about my father, how he was born to drive. It makes sense. He drives a silver boat of a patrol car for a living, would spend evenings driving all about the county after he got off work, taking Jeffery to Taekwando and me to church. He always drove Aunt Mollie to the Methodist church at Pleasant Hill on Sunday mornings and picked her up just before noon since she never stayed for the invitation hymn. And the only two times I've ever known of him go to church of his own accord were the day I was baptized and the night I played Shepherd Number 2 in a musical at the Cedar View Baptist Church. My Daddy doesn't do religion, but when his youngest, most precocious went through that Evangelical Phase small town Southern kids are susceptible to, he took off his cap, tucked in his shirt, and sat right there in the back of the sanctuary to watch me take the plunge, make my joyful noise.
Jeffrey is so much like my father. He paces the floor when he talks just like Daddy, and he never quite knows what to do with his hands when he's conversing. He is restless now, constantly burning up gas bumbling down the road in his red pick up, finding some relative or another to get mad at. That's our Momma coming out in him, but he'll settle down when he has a child. Like our father, my brother was born to be a daddy, to care for another person more than he does for himself. In Jeffrey's case, like in Daddy's, I think the other person will have to be his own child, or the equation just won't work. Men like my father and brother make strange bedfellows. They aren't passionate lovers, which precludes them from being husband material for the types of women to which they are attracted. If I had a crystal ball it would tell me that my brother will marry right around 30, have a couple kids and remain completely enthralled with them through his divorce and high cholesterol diagnosis, right up until the day he dies. Just like our father.
More tenuous is determining the Theoretical Predestined Role for myself. I'm not like the men in my family, and those men closest to me, Daddy and Jeffery, have never treated me like I would grow up to be a man at all. Daddy still doesn't want me driving late at night, and Jeffrey calls to check on me when I'm sick, not like a brother would but like a father, to impart wisdom and utter proclamations of finality, words infused with healing, "you'll be alright come morning." I often feel like the daughter and sister they never had, because I'm the sensitive one. I am the son who loves in a different way than they know how. For me, love is my mother buying me a glittery star candle holder at Goodwill because she knows that my interior design taste tends towards a tacky-hippie infusion. It's my grandmother picking me up a John Grisham book at a yard sale for a quarter, not because she knows whether or not I like his work, but because she knows I'm a reader. Thoughtfulness, random acts of kindness, evidence of care beyond the conceived parameters of care giving: this is the style in which I love, and it's often gotten me in trouble with my male friends who, upon reflection, consider the cookbook or homemade banana muffins I gave them demonstrations of my romantic interest.
I don't love like men do, because I feel that love is contingent. It's something that can slip away unless little signs are shown to indicate it's still in blossom. I learn that from my mother, and I see myself in waking dreams like her, endlessly loved yet constantly aware that at any time the affection could slip away. Love is something we pine for, like school girls, longing for a kiss, who spend Sunday afternoons weeping in unmade beds. My father loves differently, constantly, unquestioningly. He is the only man I accept this type of love style from, because I believe more than just about anything else that he was born to love his sons with every movement of his body.
But I wasn't born that way. I was born for something else, yet to be determined.
This scribble comes from a discussion I had with my therapist (did I just demolish any credibility I may have had?) and from thoughts I've had while reading The Man I Might Become: Gay Men Write About Their Fathers. I'm thinking of polishing, tightening, and including this piece in the collection of creative work I'm submitting for my master's thesis, tentatively titled Learning To Talk.
The thing my daddy is best at--and he's good at lots of things--is being a father. Not the handsomely trim, emotionally demonstrative soccer coach dad you'd see on Desperate Housewives (a DILF, if you will). He's a born caregiver. He doesn't have to look the part because he invented it. He doesn't have to say "I love you" because his body screams it with every muscle spasm and joint pop.
My daddy ran my bath water for me until I was ten years old. I think it hurt his feelings when I, in my decade's worth of grandiose wisdom, told him I would no longer need his services. He obliged me without an argument, but he was right there when, just after he left, I cranked up the hot water and yelped from the scald. Daddy cared about me, and he didn't want me to burn myself from the water that got much too hot as it traversed its way topsy-turvy through the persnickety pipes of our double-wide trailer. He cared about me enough to let me burn myself, though, and learn caution. Learn that maybe I still needed him after all.
He was at each of Jeffrey's home football games, and at most of the away ones, too, unless they were too far south in Mississippi, so far he couldn't make them in time after he got of work. Daddy loved watching those boys fumble on the field, particularly his own son, my brother, the 2nd string whatever who got little field play. Despite his love of sports and my disinterest in them, Daddy was there for all my adolescent rites of passage: choir concerts, school plays, countless academic awards ceremonies. Even the Momma I Adore can't say that much.
I took a composition class at Mississippi University for Women the summer before my senior year of high school and wrote a personal essay about my father, how he was born to drive. It makes sense. He drives a silver boat of a patrol car for a living, would spend evenings driving all about the county after he got off work, taking Jeffery to Taekwando and me to church. He always drove Aunt Mollie to the Methodist church at Pleasant Hill on Sunday mornings and picked her up just before noon since she never stayed for the invitation hymn. And the only two times I've ever known of him go to church of his own accord were the day I was baptized and the night I played Shepherd Number 2 in a musical at the Cedar View Baptist Church. My Daddy doesn't do religion, but when his youngest, most precocious went through that Evangelical Phase small town Southern kids are susceptible to, he took off his cap, tucked in his shirt, and sat right there in the back of the sanctuary to watch me take the plunge, make my joyful noise.
Jeffrey is so much like my father. He paces the floor when he talks just like Daddy, and he never quite knows what to do with his hands when he's conversing. He is restless now, constantly burning up gas bumbling down the road in his red pick up, finding some relative or another to get mad at. That's our Momma coming out in him, but he'll settle down when he has a child. Like our father, my brother was born to be a daddy, to care for another person more than he does for himself. In Jeffrey's case, like in Daddy's, I think the other person will have to be his own child, or the equation just won't work. Men like my father and brother make strange bedfellows. They aren't passionate lovers, which precludes them from being husband material for the types of women to which they are attracted. If I had a crystal ball it would tell me that my brother will marry right around 30, have a couple kids and remain completely enthralled with them through his divorce and high cholesterol diagnosis, right up until the day he dies. Just like our father.
More tenuous is determining the Theoretical Predestined Role for myself. I'm not like the men in my family, and those men closest to me, Daddy and Jeffery, have never treated me like I would grow up to be a man at all. Daddy still doesn't want me driving late at night, and Jeffrey calls to check on me when I'm sick, not like a brother would but like a father, to impart wisdom and utter proclamations of finality, words infused with healing, "you'll be alright come morning." I often feel like the daughter and sister they never had, because I'm the sensitive one. I am the son who loves in a different way than they know how. For me, love is my mother buying me a glittery star candle holder at Goodwill because she knows that my interior design taste tends towards a tacky-hippie infusion. It's my grandmother picking me up a John Grisham book at a yard sale for a quarter, not because she knows whether or not I like his work, but because she knows I'm a reader. Thoughtfulness, random acts of kindness, evidence of care beyond the conceived parameters of care giving: this is the style in which I love, and it's often gotten me in trouble with my male friends who, upon reflection, consider the cookbook or homemade banana muffins I gave them demonstrations of my romantic interest.
I don't love like men do, because I feel that love is contingent. It's something that can slip away unless little signs are shown to indicate it's still in blossom. I learn that from my mother, and I see myself in waking dreams like her, endlessly loved yet constantly aware that at any time the affection could slip away. Love is something we pine for, like school girls, longing for a kiss, who spend Sunday afternoons weeping in unmade beds. My father loves differently, constantly, unquestioningly. He is the only man I accept this type of love style from, because I believe more than just about anything else that he was born to love his sons with every movement of his body.
But I wasn't born that way. I was born for something else, yet to be determined.
This scribble comes from a discussion I had with my therapist (did I just demolish any credibility I may have had?) and from thoughts I've had while reading The Man I Might Become: Gay Men Write About Their Fathers. I'm thinking of polishing, tightening, and including this piece in the collection of creative work I'm submitting for my master's thesis, tentatively titled Learning To Talk.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The Problem of "Home" in a Young Man's Life
The major problem I've had since I left home for college when I was eighteen is whether or not I should move back to good ol' Mississip after I'm finished with all this schooling. My parents expect that I'll return and live down the road and teach at the high school and eat out at the Mexican restaurants with them 2-3 evenings a week, especially my dad. That man was put on this earth to be a father--it's what he does best--and he has felt terribly outside himself for the past five years because my older brother and I both moved away from home within weeks of each other. I went first, by the way.
I'm always torn on what to do. After a trip home, I'm either gung ho about getting back there or chomping at the bit to leave and never return. It depends on how good of a time I had. For me, going home is like going on vacation. For however long I'm there, I don't have to do anything short of hauling some wood for my grandmother and washing my own clothes. I hook back up with my high school partners in crime, eat out on Daddy's dime, and snooze and laze around watching cable t.v. Sometimes so much idle time is a dream come true for me. As an undergrad, when I lived much closer to home than I do now, I'd run home for a weekend in the midst of mid terms or room mate fights just to have a break from my "real" life. Momma and Daddy are always so excited to see me they don't know what to do with themselves, and like any good family man, I love making the parents happy. And being lavished upon.
However, home can put me in a glut, and sometimes I feel like I'm falling back into a hole of deep water I'd just managed to crawl out of. Being a bum is only worthwhile for a week or so.
This past weekend was a good one at home. I went back to see my brother and attend a family reunion, where I played with my cousins' babies and prayed to sweet, merciful Jesus that my aunt would not fight the lady at the park whose son bit my cousin on the swing set. I was sweating for a moment, because my aunt and all her brood like to throw down at a hat's drop, but cousin Vanessa's preacher husband calmed everyone down in his diplomatic way and we were spared a police citation, at least for this reunion.
I stayed out much too late with some of the old crew and swam in the shallow end in the wee hours of the morning with no clothes on. I took long think-walks around the new neighborhood that's going up by ours, played with the new beagle puppies, shopped at the dollar stores, and thoroughly enjoyed the hometown experience.
But.
I'm still not sure what to tell friends and family when confronted with the most daunting of all questions: Are you planning on coming back home after you graduate? Honestly, a very large part of my decision to go on to graduate school came from being unable and unwilling to answer that particular question. I strategically applied to schools that were at least six hours from home so I could have a bit more time and space to make up my mind about where home fits into my future. Well, I'm halfway done with my two year by, and I still don't know what I want to do. The problem is, I fall in love with every place I live after a while. I love East Tennessee, and I would settle down here in a heartbeat. Same thing happened to me and Central Arkansas. We were deeply in love for four good years, and I'd still give her the time of day if the cards so fell that way. But home--where my family is, where my roots are--that's a tough place to leave. It's even tougher to go back once you've gotten out, at least in my opinion.
Maybe North Mississippi will be my vacation home. I mean, that's what it has become for me pretty much at this point. Or maybe I will apply for jobs in the area this time next year, and look into living situations. Oh, if only I had more time to be indecisive.
In other news, I'm being published! A poem I've re-written and re-titled several times has been selected, in it's 2nd incarnation, for publication in the Knoxville Writers' Guild anthology, Outscapes: Writings on Fences and Frontiers. This version of the poem is called "Wheeling and Dealing," but its heavily edited, most recent rendition is called "Working Man's Blues." I'm going to send it out, too. It is a different poem, after all.
I'm always torn on what to do. After a trip home, I'm either gung ho about getting back there or chomping at the bit to leave and never return. It depends on how good of a time I had. For me, going home is like going on vacation. For however long I'm there, I don't have to do anything short of hauling some wood for my grandmother and washing my own clothes. I hook back up with my high school partners in crime, eat out on Daddy's dime, and snooze and laze around watching cable t.v. Sometimes so much idle time is a dream come true for me. As an undergrad, when I lived much closer to home than I do now, I'd run home for a weekend in the midst of mid terms or room mate fights just to have a break from my "real" life. Momma and Daddy are always so excited to see me they don't know what to do with themselves, and like any good family man, I love making the parents happy. And being lavished upon.
However, home can put me in a glut, and sometimes I feel like I'm falling back into a hole of deep water I'd just managed to crawl out of. Being a bum is only worthwhile for a week or so.
This past weekend was a good one at home. I went back to see my brother and attend a family reunion, where I played with my cousins' babies and prayed to sweet, merciful Jesus that my aunt would not fight the lady at the park whose son bit my cousin on the swing set. I was sweating for a moment, because my aunt and all her brood like to throw down at a hat's drop, but cousin Vanessa's preacher husband calmed everyone down in his diplomatic way and we were spared a police citation, at least for this reunion.
I stayed out much too late with some of the old crew and swam in the shallow end in the wee hours of the morning with no clothes on. I took long think-walks around the new neighborhood that's going up by ours, played with the new beagle puppies, shopped at the dollar stores, and thoroughly enjoyed the hometown experience.
But.
I'm still not sure what to tell friends and family when confronted with the most daunting of all questions: Are you planning on coming back home after you graduate? Honestly, a very large part of my decision to go on to graduate school came from being unable and unwilling to answer that particular question. I strategically applied to schools that were at least six hours from home so I could have a bit more time and space to make up my mind about where home fits into my future. Well, I'm halfway done with my two year by, and I still don't know what I want to do. The problem is, I fall in love with every place I live after a while. I love East Tennessee, and I would settle down here in a heartbeat. Same thing happened to me and Central Arkansas. We were deeply in love for four good years, and I'd still give her the time of day if the cards so fell that way. But home--where my family is, where my roots are--that's a tough place to leave. It's even tougher to go back once you've gotten out, at least in my opinion.
Maybe North Mississippi will be my vacation home. I mean, that's what it has become for me pretty much at this point. Or maybe I will apply for jobs in the area this time next year, and look into living situations. Oh, if only I had more time to be indecisive.
In other news, I'm being published! A poem I've re-written and re-titled several times has been selected, in it's 2nd incarnation, for publication in the Knoxville Writers' Guild anthology, Outscapes: Writings on Fences and Frontiers. This version of the poem is called "Wheeling and Dealing," but its heavily edited, most recent rendition is called "Working Man's Blues." I'm going to send it out, too. It is a different poem, after all.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
On Pop Songs, Cheap Champagne, and Memories I Keep Forever
I'm a soundtrack maker. That is, I like to narrate my life with indie rock and pop rock and country songs that, at least at the time, bleed with significance for what I'm going through. I remember driving from Horn Lake, Mississippi, to Conway, Arkansas, that sweat-sticky August day back in '03 when I moved into Hughes Hall for my first year of college. Back then, a three-hour drive seemed more than just the quick jaunt it is to me now, and I prepared for the trip by making a mixed c.d. of Going Away To College songs to narrate my journey from the only town, only house where I'd ever lived Into the Great Wide Open. I was such a rebel without a clue (Tom Petty knew me so well). The track I kept repeating as I bumbled nn my dented blue Ge west on I-40, watching my speed so Momma and Daddy in the loaded-down truck behind me wouldn't scold, was "Big Ol' Jet Airliner" by the Steve Miller Band. Though I didn't fly, the chorus rang true for me: "Big old jet airliner, don't carry me too far from home/Big old jet airliner, cause it's there that I belong." I was frightened, and the poppy anthem seemed to encapsulate my fear of the unknown and make my head bop comfortingly at the same time.
To this day, when I hear that song, I'm 18 years old again. God, I was cute back then.
I also attach songs to people who mean a lot to me. For instance, I can't listen to Rilo Kiley's "Always" and not think of my friend Andrew, because, like the song says, "I should have known, with a boy like you, you're middle name is always, I'd always love you." The funny thing is, he's the only boy I have ever been able to sing love songs to and not feel as if I was crossing some boundary that dare not be crossed. Love is many things, often undefinable. I may not have a clue sometimes about how one can love someone so fearlessly but not libidinal, but I know one thing. Love is no boundaries. It's shamelessly dedicating cheesy songs to someone on the radio.
There's a slew of other folks whose song memories ignite something in me: passion, nostalgia, a bittersweet smile. Regina Spektor's "Hotel Song" will always be the Spring Break 07 Writing Center Cabin Trip anthem, and Abigail knows that I'm an Engine Driver, that I'm here waiting, crash, that she's Irreplaceable.
I wonder, sometimes, what songs people attach to me. Everyone reminds me of some pop tune or another, because of an experience we shared (or I wish we'd shared), their way of being in the world. I can't hear "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" and not remember shooting tequila and dancing in the living room with my mother the New Year's Eve when I was 20. But does she think the same thing when Cher belts out her woeful story in that husky voice?
Memories are strange things, because they happen upon you unexpectedly, and often you feel embarrassed to remember nights being one in a pile of people lying on the floor after too much Andre champagne and too many rounds of "Tiny Dancer" sing-a-longs when you're walking across campus to meet with a professor and Elton John pops up on the iPod's shuffle. But, jarring as that memory can be when it visits me in public, I can't help but embrace it, miss those Saturday nights of my junior year in college, and grin thinking of all the people I may never see, let alone lie beside, again.
I'm keeping these memories, and I'm listening to these songs. They're mine, and I can keep them forever. I can keep those people forever, and that's major.
To this day, when I hear that song, I'm 18 years old again. God, I was cute back then.
I also attach songs to people who mean a lot to me. For instance, I can't listen to Rilo Kiley's "Always" and not think of my friend Andrew, because, like the song says, "I should have known, with a boy like you, you're middle name is always, I'd always love you." The funny thing is, he's the only boy I have ever been able to sing love songs to and not feel as if I was crossing some boundary that dare not be crossed. Love is many things, often undefinable. I may not have a clue sometimes about how one can love someone so fearlessly but not libidinal, but I know one thing. Love is no boundaries. It's shamelessly dedicating cheesy songs to someone on the radio.
There's a slew of other folks whose song memories ignite something in me: passion, nostalgia, a bittersweet smile. Regina Spektor's "Hotel Song" will always be the Spring Break 07 Writing Center Cabin Trip anthem, and Abigail knows that I'm an Engine Driver, that I'm here waiting, crash, that she's Irreplaceable.
I wonder, sometimes, what songs people attach to me. Everyone reminds me of some pop tune or another, because of an experience we shared (or I wish we'd shared), their way of being in the world. I can't hear "Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves" and not remember shooting tequila and dancing in the living room with my mother the New Year's Eve when I was 20. But does she think the same thing when Cher belts out her woeful story in that husky voice?
Memories are strange things, because they happen upon you unexpectedly, and often you feel embarrassed to remember nights being one in a pile of people lying on the floor after too much Andre champagne and too many rounds of "Tiny Dancer" sing-a-longs when you're walking across campus to meet with a professor and Elton John pops up on the iPod's shuffle. But, jarring as that memory can be when it visits me in public, I can't help but embrace it, miss those Saturday nights of my junior year in college, and grin thinking of all the people I may never see, let alone lie beside, again.
I'm keeping these memories, and I'm listening to these songs. They're mine, and I can keep them forever. I can keep those people forever, and that's major.
Monday, May 19, 2008
"It's okay since Momma gave it to me"
I took a diet pill this morning. Pound-X whatever. The stuff was pure speed, made me jittery for hours. I felt quite sure if I took another one my heart would explode, even if the stuff kept me from snacking. So I took another one. "It's okay," I thought, "since Momma gave it to me." And then I paused.
My habit for justifying certain bad-for-me things always involves my mother's validation. The diet pills make my heart race beyond healthy contractions? It's okay! Momma gave' em to me. I want to lay around the house all day and eat fried bologna sandwiches and Neapolitan ice cream? Mama thinks that's a good way to unwind. Even sometimes when I'm engaged in intense debates about academic things (and I'll admit that never really happens because I'm not so confrontational), I sometimes long to take the easy way out--or is it a backhanded approach?--and tell my adversary, "Well, I'm right because my Momma said so!"
I'm just going to go ahead and confess. I was that kid. You know, the little boy who loves his mother maybe a little too much. Not in a creepy way, but I was most definitely a momma's boy. A daddy's boy too, much later when I realized I'd tricked my father into loving me. But I never had to trick Momma. When I turned six, she brought 24 cupcakes (homemade, courtesy of Betty Crocker) with blue-tinted icing and M&Ms on top for my kindergarten class. She brought them up to school with bottles of Hawaiian Punch and sang "She'll Be Comin' 'Round The Mountain" to the kids in my class. I sang right along with her, much louder than the other children. It was my birthday after all.
There was a boy named Jeremy, who, after my mother left, told me I couldn't sing. I was incensed, I remember, but knew he couldn't be more wrong. I could sing well because Momma told me I could. And that's what I told him. And he laughed and I cried and a week later we became very good friends until middle school when he just disappeared from school because he'd gotten in trouble or into drugs or into jail--whatever it is unsupervised adolescent boys do to vanish from the earth. Maybe it serves him right for scoffing at my mother's omnipotent decree about my singing ability.
Now, I'm an adult, and I realize that as adults we can't weasel out of arguments or justify poor decision making by citing our mothers. I'm perfectly capable of understanding the harmful effects of diet pills and bologna sandwiches and late nights spent shotgunning beers (well, Momma wouldn't like that). But I like the feeling that what I'm doing, no matter how bad it really is, can't be that bad since my mother says it's okay. Despite her 6 a.m. phone calls that drive me crazy, my momma is the best person in the world (probably just after yours, right?). She knows more than I care to admit about living in this world, and I know she'll never steer me wrong. Because she said she wouldn't.
Besides, it's not really her fault that she doesn't read ingredient labels or worry about calorie intake and the caffeine content of diet pills. That's not what folks from her generation do. A bologna sandwich is a delicacy for her, and diet pills have helped her lose weight and make some money back in the mid-nineties. She was in on the class-action Fen-phen suit. So maybe I should readjust my rationale and give up the Pound-X whatevers. I hate to think what it would do to my poor mother if my heart exploded.
My habit for justifying certain bad-for-me things always involves my mother's validation. The diet pills make my heart race beyond healthy contractions? It's okay! Momma gave' em to me. I want to lay around the house all day and eat fried bologna sandwiches and Neapolitan ice cream? Mama thinks that's a good way to unwind. Even sometimes when I'm engaged in intense debates about academic things (and I'll admit that never really happens because I'm not so confrontational), I sometimes long to take the easy way out--or is it a backhanded approach?--and tell my adversary, "Well, I'm right because my Momma said so!"
I'm just going to go ahead and confess. I was that kid. You know, the little boy who loves his mother maybe a little too much. Not in a creepy way, but I was most definitely a momma's boy. A daddy's boy too, much later when I realized I'd tricked my father into loving me. But I never had to trick Momma. When I turned six, she brought 24 cupcakes (homemade, courtesy of Betty Crocker) with blue-tinted icing and M&Ms on top for my kindergarten class. She brought them up to school with bottles of Hawaiian Punch and sang "She'll Be Comin' 'Round The Mountain" to the kids in my class. I sang right along with her, much louder than the other children. It was my birthday after all.
There was a boy named Jeremy, who, after my mother left, told me I couldn't sing. I was incensed, I remember, but knew he couldn't be more wrong. I could sing well because Momma told me I could. And that's what I told him. And he laughed and I cried and a week later we became very good friends until middle school when he just disappeared from school because he'd gotten in trouble or into drugs or into jail--whatever it is unsupervised adolescent boys do to vanish from the earth. Maybe it serves him right for scoffing at my mother's omnipotent decree about my singing ability.
Now, I'm an adult, and I realize that as adults we can't weasel out of arguments or justify poor decision making by citing our mothers. I'm perfectly capable of understanding the harmful effects of diet pills and bologna sandwiches and late nights spent shotgunning beers (well, Momma wouldn't like that). But I like the feeling that what I'm doing, no matter how bad it really is, can't be that bad since my mother says it's okay. Despite her 6 a.m. phone calls that drive me crazy, my momma is the best person in the world (probably just after yours, right?). She knows more than I care to admit about living in this world, and I know she'll never steer me wrong. Because she said she wouldn't.
Besides, it's not really her fault that she doesn't read ingredient labels or worry about calorie intake and the caffeine content of diet pills. That's not what folks from her generation do. A bologna sandwich is a delicacy for her, and diet pills have helped her lose weight and make some money back in the mid-nineties. She was in on the class-action Fen-phen suit. So maybe I should readjust my rationale and give up the Pound-X whatevers. I hate to think what it would do to my poor mother if my heart exploded.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Why Timothy is a Bookspaz
I hit the mother load, y'all. Well, that might be an overstatement. But, I did get a few good books for really cheap yesterday on my used bookstore adventure with friend Becca. Here's the goods:
1. Edna St. Vincent Millay's Collected Sonnets (for .25!)
2. Peter Shaffer's Equus (horse porn! $1.50!)
3. Lee Smith's Cakewalk (great Southern short stories! $1.75)
4. Henry James's The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller (a 1960s double edition! .95)
5. Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (Mary Ruth told me to read that so long ago, and now I will since it was only .95!)
6. Plato's The Symposium (for the 102 class I'm working up--"Inquiry into Friendship"--I need a theoretical base. .75!)
7. Joel Spring's The American School, 1642-1990 (a history text, but interesting and FREE from the discard bin)
8. The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (a 1950 edition, paperback. FREE!)
So what's that, folks? 8 books for around $6? All I did yesterday afternoon was read bits from all of them. I now can tell you that the first high school in the country was the Boston English Classical School established in 1821, and that Lee Smith's Joline from the short story "Between the Lines" sounds an awful lot like Eudora Welty's narrator in "Why I Live At the P.O." (which you should read immediately). I can tell you that Millay deviates from the English sonnet form from time to time while still restricting her sonnets to fourteen lines and that you, Abigail, need to read her. You will LOVE her, I swear.
I'm just so giddy I can hardly stop grinning. And I need to get back to my books. Let me know any of your recent or most memorable bargain shopping and/or reading adventures.
1. Edna St. Vincent Millay's Collected Sonnets (for .25!)
2. Peter Shaffer's Equus (horse porn! $1.50!)
3. Lee Smith's Cakewalk (great Southern short stories! $1.75)
4. Henry James's The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller (a 1960s double edition! .95)
5. Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (Mary Ruth told me to read that so long ago, and now I will since it was only .95!)
6. Plato's The Symposium (for the 102 class I'm working up--"Inquiry into Friendship"--I need a theoretical base. .75!)
7. Joel Spring's The American School, 1642-1990 (a history text, but interesting and FREE from the discard bin)
8. The Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (a 1950 edition, paperback. FREE!)
So what's that, folks? 8 books for around $6? All I did yesterday afternoon was read bits from all of them. I now can tell you that the first high school in the country was the Boston English Classical School established in 1821, and that Lee Smith's Joline from the short story "Between the Lines" sounds an awful lot like Eudora Welty's narrator in "Why I Live At the P.O." (which you should read immediately). I can tell you that Millay deviates from the English sonnet form from time to time while still restricting her sonnets to fourteen lines and that you, Abigail, need to read her. You will LOVE her, I swear.
I'm just so giddy I can hardly stop grinning. And I need to get back to my books. Let me know any of your recent or most memorable bargain shopping and/or reading adventures.
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