Sunday, November 13, 2011
The mocking, the mocking.
I just want to say - these blog posts are getting harder to write. The notes I'm coming across have so much backstory, so many raw feelings, it's a little disturbing to put myself back there and then try to pare it down to one post. Still, I want to have 12 solid posts before this blog's birthday in January, to average out to one a month... so hopefully I can get it together in the next little bit.
Well, I think it's time the tables turned. Today, I bring you a note not written to me, but by me! My best friend also has a stash of notes from junior high, and recently, we stayed up too late, drinking whiskey and giggling our way through them, trying to figure out what in the world we were referring to 12 years ago and carefully re-folding our well-creased triangles.
This note is a prime example of one of the best kinds of junior-high notes - the language is fascinating. It's full of what I call "inside language" - like inside jokes but it's not funny - and its use was never designed to be a secret code, but that's how it reads and is a tribute to the relationship Kate* and I had. Our friend (and my ex-boyfriend) Alan**, around the same time, described us (in writing - this is verbatim) as being "somewhere between best friends and constellations of each other; the path of one depends on the other's gravitational pull" and after nearly 14 years of friendship, we're not that twinny but we're just as close. Even though I express concern that she might be "sick of me" and give her option to not hang out at the end of the note, I'm pretty sure she didn't take me up on it. We slept over at each other's houses at least twice a week - often on weekdays - and would follow one another home from school. We had A.P. U.S. history together, which resulted in long nights of studying and worked together at a coffee shop not far from my house. We were together nearly all the time and I called her my sister.
I'm not exactly sure which "situation" that turned into "problem" and then an "annoyance" I was referring to, because the "tragically depressing ingrate", our friend Sam***, caused a lot of these for me in 10th grade. In fact, this note could probably be written nearly any day of that school year. The three of us were on an Odyssey of the Mind team together with some other kids that made up our core group of friends. I'm not sure the word "disaster" can truly convey what that experience was like - coaching 6 nerdy, manipulative, angst-ridden friends that are trying to work together to solve a stupid problem (this was the year Odyssey of the Mind actually became Destination: Imagination in Minnesota and it sucked) sounds like probably the worst thing you could decide to do, but our coach did an admirable job considering the kind of stuff we pulled:
1. One punched (through) door.
2. One plot to put razor blades into shoes and kick the ankles of another teammate at a rave.
3. One half of the team going on strike, leaving the other 3 kids to do nearly everything a few days before competition.
You get the idea - it was tumultuous at best. The only thing we were really good at was Improv. Our angry tension turned into pretty great comedic timing, and was the only point at which we actually came together as a group to create rather than destroy.
Sam and I had a friendship in which we challenged each other to the extreme. There was a lot of lying, violence (he once slammed my head into the ground and gave me a minor concussion during a game of flashlight tag - to be fair, I kind of deserved it) and manipulation. Our friendship was so involved and time-consuming that it resulted, in part, in the breakup between Alan and I. He was jealous of it, sure I was in love with Sam rather than him because I put so much effort into cultivating our ridiculous relationship, particularly one long-term lie/manipulation/deception, which I'll write about another time.
I'm not exactly sure what was wrong with me that day. It was obviously troubling me, and he was obviously concerned, but all of that other stuff came between his expressing it and my receiving it well. While I was able to communicate the infuriation I felt ("the mocking, the MOCKING") to Kate, and which I'm sure I re-hashed for her in person, I wasn't able to ever communicate to Sam without more trouble, more lying, and more violence. He had this way of masterfully getting under my skin even when reaching out, and the idea of being honest and open never occured to us so it was hard to tell when that happened.
Despite this basis for friendship, to this day Sam and I are connected on such a deep emotional level I can't fully describe it. To others, I call him my twin without blinking, like he's the male version of me, an extension of me. Just like family, he's always there, integrally a part of my life. And just like my family, we have communication issues sometimes, but I know they will never touch our fundamental relationship.
Still, it troubles me that I can't describe Sam and I's friendship well, or trace back how and why we're so close, when I am able to discern and pick apart most of my relationships quite analytically, noting significant moments, turning points and motivations for both sides. I think in part it's because everything was so crazy then - adolescence is full of changes and growing, and obviously mine was a little extreme at times. But I also think it's because, like my family, it feels like Sam has always been there - there's no "start" to our friendship, just like I foresee no end, so if I still feel the need to try and track it all back, at the very least, I have time.
* & ** & *** - all names changed to protect these people from hating me too much.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
More Church! More Camp!
Each one is really formulaic - for example, Sunday night is when everyone meets their teammates and decides who has what role. Wednesday night is the talent show, Thursday night is Jesus Died For Your Sins And You Should Feel Really Bad About It night, Friday night is a celebration of all the work done and goodbyes, since everyone makes a mass exit Saturday morning after breakfast.
The official stance of the Group Workcamps Foundation is that it's not so much about the service projects but rather a chance to deepen a relationship with Christ, which I'm sure a lot of people felt, but I just wasn't one of them. My mom is fond of saying that Presbyterians like "a little religion with their art" which made it pretty easy for me to "pass" amongst them as a young atheist, but it wasn't as easy in my Group Workcamp team, especially when I decided in my second year that I wanted to try being devotion leader for the week.
It didn't seem hard, nor did I feel any conflict - you read the prescribed scripture for the day over lunch and lead a discussion about what it meant to everyone. The theme was later repeated in the evening program. Even though I didn't feel as though I had a personal relationship with God, I've always been able to read poems and fiction and dissect them for discussion - in fact, it's one of my favorite things - and I didn't figure this to be much of a challenge. Simply because I didn't believe everything didn't mean I could parse out greater meaning and depth.
What WAS a challenge, however, was my team - especially when, about halfway through the week - I divulged that I wasn't so sure about God. I'm not sure what scripture reading I had just done, or what someone else said that prompted me to reveal this information, but the silence that followed told me I'd made a big mistake. The kids looked at the ground until one of the adults tried to salvage the conversation about the scripture, ending quickly with a prayer and having everyone finish up their ham and cheese sandwiches. I was then pulled aside and demoted from devotion leader to... nothing. I remember numbly continuing to paint the inside of a garage, mostly ignored by the rest of my group for most of the day, while I tried to understand what had just happened and why I felt as though I'd done something horribly wrong when all I had been is honest.
At the end of the week, we said our goodbyes and I left, clutching an envelope full of something called "Care Cards" - they're short notes you're supposed to write to your team and every member of your youth group during the week. The notes are all little nuggets of inspiration and gratitude like "Thanks for your hard work!" and "I see God's light shining in you" and "You're the best!" They all go into an envelope and when you leave on Saturday morning, they're distributed so you can read all the notes from the week on the ride home. My notes also tended to say things like "No offense but you're really strange" and would mention I had a "unique attitude".Reading through the care cards from that week is a little hard; I remember how confused and hurt I was. One of the girls, Jenny, wrote "Your love for Christ is already shining through to me with the work you're doing. Keep it up!" in the beginning of the week, and at the end of the week she wrote "It's been interesting this past week working w/ you."
Jenny on Monday - I'm the best girl ever! |
Jenny on Friday - not feeling the love. |
Another girl wrote "I liked talking to you this past week. Even though our beliefs and opinions differed, I found you interesting. Good luck with your future plans." I get it, I'm obviously not full of Christ's love, so obviously how hard I worked to make our resident's house a better place is irrelevant.
One of the things we differed on was whether or not she should take her narcolepsy medication. After she fell asleep on the roof one day, my vote was YES. |
The mass-distributed care card from the M.C. (who essentially was the Head Devotion Leader) says "It was not a freak accident that you were your crew's devotion leader. Continue to tell people about Jesus, and explore the gifts God has given you!" I came across this care card right before I read one from a friend of mine in youth group.
It starts "My Atheist friend. Why do you bother with workcamp?" I remember thinking to myself, "Yeah, why?" It was 10 days out of my summer, with all the travel. I stuck out from the group as an unknown, I was frustrated with feeling alienated and alone, I was both a little intimidating and intimidated, my eye-rolling muscles were getting a huge workout, and I didn't know if I was doing any good or really belonged.
I don't know if I really answered myself in the end, but I kept going until I left for college.
Over the years, Group Workcamp programs changed; they got a little more extreme, contrived and disturbing, especially Thursday night:
Thursday morning: Workcampers! Bring a rock from your worksite to tonight's program!
Thursday night: THE ROCK IS THE WEIGHT OF YOUR SINS! PUT THE ROCK IN THIS COFFIN WE HAVE CONVENIENTLY LEFT ON STAGE! NOW EVERYONE TRY AND LIFT IT! GO AHEAD AND TRY TO LIFT THE COFFIN!! NO ONE CAN LIFT IT BUT JEEESSSSUUSSSS!! (Coffin rises magically in the air)
... the rising part I may have made up, but you get the idea. I spoke out against returning, and instead finding another program that suited our needs more (and didn't result in a late Thursday night trip to Dairy Queen to debrief so we wouldn't be afraid to fall asleep) but was shot down because it wasn't tradition (this was also the response to the notion of NOT riding 900+ miles in a school bus from Minneapolis to Tennessee. I'm pretty sure my spine has never been the same).
Over the years, I also changed. I played to my "audience" in a way: I learned all the words to "Flood". I kept to being in charge of lunch, snacks, and water breaks at camp. I took over the back of the school bus and reigned (nicknamed "Queen Kashena") with the combined force of my eye-rolling and sarcasm... but I also kept trying to change things for the better, making the experience more inclusive, introducing more levity. One year I decided to write a care card to every single camper. All 500+ of them. I succeeded, but I didn't really sleep. One year I held a dramatized re-enactment of the War of 1812 between the U.S. and Canada on the ceiling of the bus (green army men with magnets on the bottom and duct-taped flags everywhere). I also refused to participate in our youth group's yearly "initiation" which took place during the first lunch stop of the first day. The senior kids would haze the first-year kids in a bizzare hostile takeover of what would otherwise be a peaceful time to stretch and eat a sandwich.
In the years since I've left, the youth group has changed too - they pick more community-centered programs. They travel in 15-person passenger vans. They try new methods for fundraising... and they know the percentage of the youth group that secretly considers itself to be Atheist or Agnostic: a pretty shocking (to the congregation) 70%.
That 70% gives up 10 days of their summers, makes ham-and-cheese sandwiches for campers, dutifully paints houses and builds wheelchair ramps for the elderly.
I think they're doing OK.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
I have a crush on U.
I basically got this note twice in one year. |
By spring, I’d narrowed it down to two schools – the exclusive, Episcopalian Breck School and De La Salle, a Catholic high school on an island. I knew that Breck was the smart choice - I had no interest in Catholicism, a strict uniform policy, and a mandatory religion class. Breck had an extremely strong program, was close to my house, and had several acquaintances from elementary school, assuring my transition to a new school smoother than usual.
Unfortunately, I had no interest in attending private school. I didn’t want to leave my friends, was confident in my public high school to provide a great education, and was probably a bit terrified of having to actually work at doing well. Instead of communicating these very valid concerns to my parents, I hurled myself toward the school where I knew would end in my failure, because that’s the kind of self-destruction I excel at.
In my admission interview at De La Salle, they asked me what denomination of Christianity I most identified with, and I said I was an Atheist. They asked what my favorite Bible verse was, and my response went something like this: “The one where they eat babies. You know, because of the famine.” (This is true. 2 Kings. Look it up.) They then asked me what I’d taken away from this particular verse, and I’m pretty sure I said something along the lines of “Always eat someone else’s baby first.”
The acceptance letter came three weeks later.
So we bought the uniforms, I got my first metro bus pass to go to school, we paid tuition. My first week was a blur of August heat and disorientation; I was terrified of being stopped in the hall by an upperclassman and ordered to sing the school song or recite the school’s mission statement, failure of which would result in detention. My 8th period math class was held at the top of a tower, where I was held prisoner by algebra and an angry, bitter nun who liked to start class by wordlessly pacing around the room for a few minutes before returning to the front. She’d stand up there, dressed in all black despite the heat – and would gravely announce in a low voice: “Three of you are in uniform violation. Detention awaits.” Seriously. I could practically see the wheels in her head, churning out malice. As she moved forward with her lesson, we’d spend the rest of the afternoon wondering which of us were to be written up; the suspense was torture as we all continued to wilt, our uniforms wrinkling, our brows sweating.
I had a hard time making friends. Most of the other kids already knew each other from their private, Catholic middle and elementary schools. Almost all of the Catholic schools in Minneapolis fed into De La Salle – particularly the schools where the student body was predominately Black. This was also new to me – even though I’m half Black, I’d attended schools with a very small Black population, and the culture seemed foreign to me. I felt guilty and awkward about this, particularly when my mom asked me why I didn’t really have any Black friends – and I didn’t have a response. My family had attended a Black Methodist church while I growing up, where I fell in love with gospel music and hats, but I’d never felt a connection to anything else there. We stopped going around 4th or 5th grade, so I never entered a confirmation class or a youth group, or found anywhere else I’d have made friends. We didn’t live near my grandparents, aunts or cousins, so they weren’t a big part of my universe, and as a result “Black culture” wasn’t a big part of my life.
I was also in the very beginning of my disordered eating habits; I’d become a vegetarian over the summer and refused to buy food from the cafeteria – instead I brought my own raw cabbage and sunflower seed sandwiches with butter. This weirdness didn’t really endear me to the rest of the kids at lunch time, so I took to eating alone and reading. Eventually, I made friends with a kid named Harrison*, whose parents were psychiatrists; we’d spend hours on the phone discussing our mutual strangeness and all of the things we observed about our fellow students; I’ve been hyper observant most of my life, and Harrison was taught from birth to put meaning and weight to everyone’s words and actions, so we had a pretty complete picture of what everyone else was doing, and how separate we were from it. One night he asked me if I liked him, and I said sure; we were friends, right? He pressed the issue, and I realized he was asking if I like-liked him. I went quiet, and I heard him breathing shallowly into the phone. It was the last time we talked.
That movie deal comment is a whole other blog post worth of material. |
Three weeks into the school year, I knew I’d had enough. For all its preparatory laudation, I wasn’t challenged. My classmates were more concerned with makeup, boys, and Homecoming, and I longed for familiarity and wearing jeans to school. My parents asked me to give it more time, and I did – but only about two months. By late October I was miserable, and ready to flee. I re-enrolled in public school, and when I told my classmates at De La Salle I was leaving, I was unprepared by the attention I received. I was passed the above card with everyone’s best wishes, most of them saying things like “too bad we didn’t get to know each other” and “I’ll miss you” and “it was nice knowing you”. One of the boys in my English group, Matt*, wrote me this other note, telling me he had a crush on me:
I have a crush on U. |
I doubt I’ll ever really know what I was thinking then, but only part of me wishes I did; a few years ago I even burned all of my journal entries from around that time, so only these letters remain. Many of the choices I made were painfully irresponsible and self-destructive; I did everything I could to set myself up for failure, time and time again. I know hindsight is 20/20 and all that, but I know I was cognisant of the consequences of bad choices, and I still made them. I still felt trapped. The only theory I have is that even now, my inability to communicate negative emotions and thoughts constructively trips me up, and so I was probably completely unable to do so back then.
That nun, though. I hope she got what she deserved.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Hormones! Hormones! Hormones!
Monday, March 14, 2011
Apologies...
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Clearwater... part 1
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Peace, Love, Happiness, Whatever
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
I know you have been violent to others. Like me.
Mr. Heinecke rarely called me by my first or last name. He usually called on me by saying "Yes Ma'am," because I was a snobby know-it-all. When he assigned writing a response to the movie "Black Sheep" I refused, citing the film "immature" and "stupid" and while the rest of the class was excited to spend the day watching the movie, I actually moved my desk into the hall and worked on my essay alone. I'd decided to write on the BBC version of Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca" which I'd taped off of PBS; I was also quite fond of the thesaurus:
"Mrs. Danvers was insanely rancorous with Mrs. De Winter. She was upset that Mrs. De Winter had moved into Manderly, the manor where the story primarily took place and thought that she did not know how a household should be run. She was also irate that Mrs. De Winter was slowly taking over Rebecca's spot in the household. She was enraged and resentful of the fact that Mr. De Winter had married very soon after Rebecca's death, and was embittered that the new Mrs. De Winter was so young and did not come from a wealthy family. Mrs. Danvers was acrimonious and resentful of Mrs. De Winter."
I also had a lot of insecurity about how smart I was. The "West" that Chris asks about beating was the rival junior high in our school district, which seemed to always edge us out in Knowledge Masters, a competition like Quiz Bowl. West had a system that involved tryouts and alternates for their team, like football, and designated "captains" for every subject. Our school's team was hand-picked by the directors of our gifted program, who had already expressed their ambiguity about my participation. I desperately wanted to be on the team, but when the list of names was posted, mine wasn't there.
I was eventually asked to join the team a few weeks later when another member had too many extra-curricular activities and resigned. He suggested me as a replacement, and when friends of mine on the team got behind the idea, the directors did too - but I never forgot I was second (or third or fourth) choice. I was on the junior high team for two years and the high school team for one before I was asked to co-captain the high school team my junior and senior years, and I have never felt the need to rub something in someones face as badly as I did that day. It took every ounce of maturity I had to not run across the football field, get a visitor's badge, burst into the gifted offices and announce loudly, that I, the fourth-choice girl, was going to captain a team, so they could SUCK IT.
Of course, being on a team and being a captain are really different, which took a while to learn. Since my junior high didn't have "captains", just the directors of the program, and was more of a hodge-podge, I think I can understand why I wasn't the first choice to be on the team. Maybe. Let's just say I'll never forgive them (I'm not perfect!), but can understand.
When building a KM team, it's very important to get the right balance - some energetic kids, some calm kids, kids who are strong in different areas. I knew I was very strong in literature and logical reasoning, but was also a bit of a mess. I'm sure the violence Chris refers to in his letter was, on one hand, the fact that I'd hit him in the arm a lot when he annoyed me, but on the other hand my general state: Caffeine-induced mania, lack of sleep, a good amount of anger and snobbishness - not exactly the description of a good team player, no matter how smart you are.
Friday, January 28, 2011
"Jade" the Possum
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Hope Your Robot Brings You an A
Anyone who knows me knows I love robots. I have a large blue robot that was given to me in college – a good friend made it for me in his lab (he was an aeronautical and astronomical PhD student) out of wood and hardware, and brought it by the library where I worked as surprise. The best feature he has is poseable eyebrows. Hilarious! I also have little sticky robots on my desk at work - they make for great lunchtime photo sessions behind a backdrop of copier paper (I work hard, I promise).
With most of my elementary school classmates, we’d just “graduated” from 5th grade and moved over to one of the school district’s middle schools. This was the first time we had more than one class in English; our elementary school had been an immersion school, but the middle school was a sort of hybrid system that incorporated multiple elementary schools, so half our day was in English with other kids (gym, art, math, English), the other half in Spanish with (social studies, science, Spanish). It was also pretty large in comparison, and I remember getting lost on more than one occasion, but did eventually figure it out, I guess. I mean, I’m not there now, so I think I did OK.
And I’m not sure why my mom thought Kelly would figure out what I was going to give her for her 12th birthday. Was I really bad at keeping secrets then? Had I told our other best friends, Kelsey and Christy? I was probably worrying unnecessarily, which is still one of my favorite pastimes. Things I am unnecessarily worried about right now:
n Crocodiles (is there a chance they could come to the
n Alligators (see Crocodiles, but without the tracking part. They don’t/can’t/aren’t willing to do that. I appreciate their laziness.)
n Falling off my bike (I am not currently on a bike, but I was this morning. I was worried then too, but it was more appropriate.)
I rotate worries/fears pretty often so it never gets boring, though Crocodiles are almost always on the list. Unless I’m at home and then the fear of burglary usually edges them out, because I haven’t heard of crocodiles in the PNW yet, so I don’t worry them being in my kitchen like that one woman in Florida who was nearly eaten.*
*Ok, she wasn't nearly eaten. But still. Could have been.
UPDATE: My mom says I was worried about Kelly finding out about the gift because I HAD told Kelsey and Christy and was concerned they'd tell. Huh, the things you find out when you share your blog with your mom.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
First Boyfriend, First Post
Tim C. was the first boy to ask me out. It happened at breakfast during Environmental Camp - an educational week of "tracking" animals in the woods, looking at poop, cross-country skiing, and dog sledding - and it was pretty awesome. Tim's best friend Chris, who had long hair and wore a lot of black, came up as I was just taking a sip of juice and dropped the note in my lap. My eyes followed him back to his seat before opening the note, and he tried to keep me from seeing Tim's red face pressed between his arms on the table. I read it quickly, stuffed it into my pocket, and tried to ignore the teasing that promptly ensued from my table.
I've recently found others, all dating from 1994 - 2001 or so, and have started to go through them. They are often sweet and hilarious - sometimes a little troubling and sad - but they struck me as being quite accurate snapshots of who I was then, and probably of how a lot of other people were too, and I thought it'd be interesting to share. So in the words of Tim C. - let's start with this!