December 1st, 2010
Reverb 10
So there’s been a paucity of blog inspiration in my life of late–terrible, I know. So I thought Reverb 10, as suggested by the wonderous Book Madam, would be a good jumpstart for me. Actually, this is just a test run, becauseI feel like this is one of those things I get totally obsessed with or else ignore completely. We’ll see which one it turns out to be…when I either finish the month of posts or I don’t.
What Reverb is is taking the month of December to reflect on the past year and the one ahead, one prompt a day, to be answered in public, blog/tweet/photo format.
Here’s today’s prompt:
December 1 One Word.
Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?
(Author: Gwen Bell)
In 2010, from January 1 to now, I’ve been living in one place, working at one job, writing one book, and in love with one person. Unlike a few years of my life where nothing seemed to change and the word “stagnate” came to mind (2004, I’m looking at you), this year felt really strong and productive, as if I were laying foundations for all kinds of future good things. My word for 2010 is solid.
In 2011, I’ll probably move, and in doing so, move to a different phase of my life (I’ve lived at the Rose-coloured Ranch since May 2003). Also next year, *The Big Dream* will almost certainly be published, and people I didn’t handpick will be able to read it!! Even scarier, I’ll start work on a new book. I’d like to make my 2011 word adventure–to keep me from thinking of other, more cowardly words to cover all this new stuff!
What are your words?
November 25th, 2010
Reviews again
Before Once came out, I was pretty scared of reviews. To get over the fear, I gave myself several excellent peptalks about how it any serious attention to my work would be an honour, and I didn’t need everyone–or anyone–to like it, that I could learn from criticism and improve, etc., etc. I still pretty skittery, especially since reviews could jump at me from nowhere, in a journal or on a website I was reading, with no prior warning. It’s bad enough when someone blindsides me with a criticism of dayjob work, or my appearance, or the way I’ve arrayed my groceries on the conveyor belt (happens all the time; apparently, I can’t get that one right)–I try to be mature, especially if I sense they’ve got it correct. But the writing’s so important to me, I feel like I want to be alone in a quiet safe place when a stranger says something not 100% enthusiastic. Hence the utility of the self-Google–you decide when you’re ready, you lock the door, and then if you read something truly harsh (like the word “boring” several times), you can pace around your locked apartment in small circles until the urge to Facebook the reviewer with a lengthy rebuttal goes away. You take a lot of deep breaths, and decide you can’t please everyone. You eventually permit yourself to go outside.
I’m, er, a little sensitive, which is a pointless way to be when you are trying to publish work so that other people can read it–other people’s reactions to my work, and the fact that they differ from mine, is the whole point of publishing. Which is why I tried so hard to toughen up, and now can’t even remember the name of that reviewer who used the word “boring” so many times. Really!
But I’ve let my toughness muscles go a bit slack over the past year or so, after the reviews pretty much died down. So I was really startled when this week I ran into two reviews of my book, utterly unexpected. I was quite alarmed before reading–I hadn’t given myself a peptalk in ages!
Thank goodness the reviews were positive, insightful, and generous–no need for bracing! If you’d like to hear more about it, you can try the Canadian Literature website or the print edition of the current issue of The Fiddlehead.
And if you have advice on how to cope with reviews you disagree with, other than weeping or sending embarrassing rebuttals, let me know.
And a few notes:
1) I believe there are occasions when it is useful and wise for an author to respond to a review, and not at all cringe-worthy. I just can’t think of any right now.
2) Reading reviews by strangers is altogether different from receiving workshop or editorial feedback, or comments from readers–not sure why. Maybe it’s because I have the opportunity to engage and ask questions, or maybe it’s because, in the first two cases anyway, the criticism is offered for my own good, to try to help me improve the work…
3) I was totally going to do something clever with the title of this post–something rhyming or alliterative, or maybe both–but I couldn’t think of anything that made sense….
September 29th, 2010
It’s the frosh questionnaire!
Do you remember when you started your first year of university, you had all these new friends you didn’t really know, plus you missed your friends from high school, plus you had your own computer for the first time ever (I was a special case of lame/inept, and had had to share my father’s *email address* until I moved out)? So when those inane “Getting to know you” questionnaires came into your inbox, it was actually pretty interesting, and lots of people actually did them.
And then they came around every fall, and it got less interesting–people’s favourite beverages didn’t change that much from year to year. And gradually people stopped responding, because they actually knew their friends better than some lame email forward could help them with.
Unless you are me, and you just started writing your own questionnaires. Cause I liked the idea of just being able to ask a bunch of random questions all in a row and get answers–if it were socially acceptable, that’s what I’d do at parties! So I did these all through uni, a new one each year, and actually far beyond that, though I’ve fallen off recently.
But this year, I am filled with frosh nostalgia and the desire to procrastinate, so here it is: RR’s 2010 Frosh Questionnaire! I’ve tried to make it a bit bookish, given the ostenisble nature of this blog. But it is the actual nature of these questionnaires to be pretty random, so…
In case you’ve never seen one of these before, there are no rules but guidelines are: cut’n’paste it onto your own blog, onto Facebook, in the comments section, or in an email. Delete my answers, put in your own. If you think a question is dumb, or prying, or just not applicable, delete it and put in your own question, then answer it. If you’ve known me a while, you might see a rerun question from an earlier version–some things never cease to be fascinating, plus even old friends evolve.
If you post this somewhere, let me know so I can come read and be fascinated by the minutiae of your life. Minutiae is what I love!
1. What did you do on your last birthday? Went to giant Catholic church in Montreal, wandered around, then swam in hotel swimming pool. In the evening, tried to eat in restaurant that seemed, judging by service, to be front for crack house. Abandoned ship after a hungry hungry hour to go to Porgugese chicken place. Put a birthday candle in chicken breast. Judged evening a success.
2. Name something awesome about you that you’ve never been able to market properly. I don’t get bored easily. I’m happy to eat the same thing every day for lunch, I love talking about the weather, and I can kill up to 30 minutes just looking at stuff in the drug store. I think this is a good quality to have, but I can’t think of a way to phrase it in a job interview or on a date.
3. What book do you have to resist trying to force other people to read? I’m currently reading Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting, and that will certainly go on the list. And a lot of lesser-known John Update stuff–especially the Bech books, which are justifiably famous on the internet, but in real life I’ve never met anyone who likes them.
4. How good a swimmer are you? Good enough not to drown, bad enough to occasionally drift out of my lane at the pool without noticing. And I can’t dive at all, which caused me to fail my red badge 4x, and then to drop out of swimming lessons entirely. But I actually do like to swim.
5. Ideal pet? Small orange cat. But I like most pets, really.
6. If you don’t have to compromise with other diners or pay for extra toppings, what goes on the pizza? Standard vegetarian–tomatoes, onions, peppers, mushrooms–plus extra sauce. But I’m happy to pick off anything but olives or pineapple (the taste remains on the cheese with those)–pepperoni-lovers enjoy sitting next to me.
7. Can you, in your own estimation but also the viewpoint of the real world, sing? No. I can’t even stay on-key for *Happy Birthday.* I’ve only recently gotten self-conscious about this, though; I used to not care.
8. What are you wearing right now? Blue rosebud slippers from Chinatown, black yoga pants that I got for my 31st birthday, orange t-shirt that says “Aloha” on it that my friend J brought back from Aloha State Park in New York the summer I turned 13, navy blue hoodie my dad bought for my brother also somewhere in the early 90s. When my brother refused to wear it, it became mine.
9. When, in your opinion, is it appropriate to chew gum? Anytime one is not eating, singing, public-speaking or playing a wind instrument. Making out is open to debate with one’s partner.
10. What book did you read as a teen that made you realize how smart and misunderstood and *deep* you are? For sure The Bell Jar (and I had that black rose cover, too!) I actually still like that book, but also in that category was The Paper Grail. I’m not sure why I thought that, even if I didn’t understand *one word* of the book, if I finished it that made me smart.
11. What magazine would you never buy yourself but always sort of hope is in the stack at the doctor’s office? One of women’s ones that are printed on the cheaper newsprint and feature health scares, chocolate recipes, and diet tips.
12. Can you bake a pie? It was a point of pride for my mother that I learn how, so yes, technically I can, and have done so a number of times, always in company of talented bakers. I don’t like to flirt with pastry too much when alone, though–it frightens me.
13. Who lives next door to you? What is your relationship like? I used to have a friendly, slightly flirtatious relationship with my next-door neighbour, but since the onset of his paranoia, mainly I listen to him talk about how the other neighbours are out to get us both. Actually, he doesn’t talk to me as much now that he has that friend from SpyTech. I never spoke to any of the other neighbours. It’s a somewhat strange building.
14. What is the easiest way for you to learn a new skill? By someone telling me how to do it and possibly demonstrating, while I sit passively and take notes. Later, I will try it out on my own and practice until I get it. I am the person traditional schoolrooms were built for, but this actually applies to getting directions, cooking, assembling furniture–I like being told what to do.
15. What is that book you keep meaning to read and haven’t, and feel bad about every time it comes up in conversation? Oh, so many of these, but one is Consolation by Michael Redhill. But someone loaned it to me today, so I’m moving forward, at least a little.
16. What are you listening to right now Danny Michel.
17. Do you remember what you wore on the first day of high school? If so, what? If not, substitute some other important day when you remember what you wore. Faded blue-jean shorts and grey t-shirt with tiny flowers on it (from Northern Reflections, natch). I wanted to blend in with the lockers as much as possible. I was much shyer back then.
18. What are you doing tonight? Let’s go, Blue Jays!
19. What’s the last thing you ate? A whole bunch of grapes. They were about to go bad, so I had to eat them lest they go to waste.
20. Why did you do this questionnaire? Because I like to talk about myself, and as bait for other people to talk about themselves, which I also really like.
September 10th, 2010
A fun sort of freakishness
I am very tired and miserable today, so I thought I would cheer myself and possibly my readers by talking about one of my better skills: winning raffles. I don’t know if talking about my gift in this way will cause it to evaporate, but I have been silent too long: I am Rebecca, and I win raffles. Not always, but an awful lot.
It all started when I was 5, with my first-ever raffle ticket. My parents had valiently held out against the Cabbage Patch Kid craze, insisting that no toy that was worth whatever they cost, I think maybe $40 or so. But they did consent to give me a $1 to enter the raffle at the local fair, one of the prizes for which was a Cabbage Patch Premie, pretty much the most adorable thing ever.
“I’m going to win that doll,” I told my mother.
“That’s not the way it works. You just pay for a chance to put your ticket in with a lot of other people’s tickets and they only draw one. You probably won’t win the doll,” said my mother.
I won the doll. Terrible lesson. Or at least, it would have been if I didn’t continue to win stuff.
Mind you, I’m talking about raffles–local fundraisers with prizes donated by the community or door prizes at parties, not lotteries or sweepstakes or anything involving a cruise ship. I think the most any of my prizes has been worth is about $100, and mainlysignificantly less. Plus the largest *cash* prize I’ve ever received was $8. But I’ve gotten some nice stuff, and it’s good for morale to win things. Here, for the sake of my morale, and to prove that my gift is real, is a lifetime list of stuff I’ve won in raffles (more or less chronological):
–Cabbage Patch premie
–stuffed white dog holding Christmas stocking in mouth
–My Little Pony baby seahorse
–black corderoy trucker’s cap with advert for local famer’s co-op on it
–stuffed white bear wearing red scarf
–dinner at Swiss Chalet
–anthology of poetry reviews
–bag of Hallowe’en chocolate
–bath set (there may have been more than one of these; sort of a blur)
–chance to go see Tragically Hip for only $7
–enormous cookie
–gift certificate to bowling alley
–ritzy dinner in French restaurant
–Mac8600 (used)
–$100 gift certificate for Ryerson bookstore
–$20 gift certificate for Amazon.ca
–centrepieces (many; mostly ones I could not carry on the bus and had to leave behind; once famously a tin sandbucket, which I have grown very attached to)
–elaborately frosted chocolate cake
–broadside by Al Purdy about Charle Bukowski
–movie tickets, various, including passes to any cinema, passes to press screenings of new movies, and tickets to a TIFF screening
–hand mirror with matching brush
–illustrated copy of Hamlet
September 1st, 2010
As busy as I want to be
Rosalynn from TNQ/The Literary Type and I often seem to be on the same wavelength, but never more so than in her post on busy-ness. I had always sensed that there is a value judgement inherent in that word, I just couldn’t articulate how. And now R has articulated it for me:
“I’m starting to wonder if, somehow, “busy” has somehow become synonymous with “successful.” As though if you’re not constantly doing something, you must be doing something wrong. And not only should you be “busy,” you should feel obliged to jokingly complain about it, as though, you know, you really wish your life were not so very full and “busy”, but hey, you’re powerless to change it. So many people need so many things from you, all the time.”
What this modern-day concept of the word has basically buried is that everyone is busy–we do things for all the time we are awake. Some of those things are not glamourous or even interesting, but unless you are actually staring at a wall in suspended animation, you are busy–reading, talking, eating, writing. I don’t particularly like to be invited to do something at last minute, even if I ostensibly have “no plans”: the book and/or the video is a plan, too, and reading or watching is as “busy” as a party.
In my opinion.
After reading this post, I thought about a woman who once described to me a book she had thought of writing. I thought she wanted suggestions on how to get started, which I offered. She quickly cut me off, saying, “I know I’m not going to write it. I like to have fun too much.”
At the time, I was mildly insulted–I thought she was making fun of my nerdish lifestyle. But now I think she was incredibly honest. Her priorities are different than mine, and she wasn’t going to be embarrassed about that. Remember those girls you knew in school (everybody knew girls like this) who were regularly “too busy” to come to the movies with an all-female posse, but could always find the time for a male? They weren’t lying; different activities rank differently: once you’re fed and rested and studied and worked, how are you going to slice up the rest of the time?
By my own standards (and certainly by my mother’s), I have a lot on my plate–but it’s my plate and I’m an adult, so I serve myself (this metaphor is officially over). Shortly after reading that post at TLT, someone I respect remarked how difficult it must be to work full time and write seriously. People say this to me occasionally and it’s a delightful compliment, appealing as it is to my sense of myself as a dramatic martyr to my art. Unfortunately, I’m no kind of martyr; I *like* writing. It is fun to me, which is why I can do it even when I’m tired or I’ve just gotten 4 rejections or that spot on the couch just looks so comfy. (I realize there are some writers can work for long periods on their couchs; I am not one of them).
Cognizant of all this, I made myself say to this woman, “It’s actually fine–I’d rather do it this way than any other way I’ve thought of.” Though it would have been much more fun to throw myself across her desk and murmur, “Oh, how I suffer!”
I could be less busy if I wanted to: I could give up or cut down on the writing, stop watching trashy movies, only read books that relate directly to my work, get a car and stop spending 1.5 hours a day on transit, quit both my writing groups and book club, never do anyone a favour, not host parties, only call my parents every other Sunday, break up with Mark and uninstall Facebook Scramble. And then there’s the matter of this blog…
Everyone who read that did so list thinking certain items were obviously jokes and others would really be good to cut back on. We prioritize on our own systems, and really, it comes down to what we care about. Me, I care about all of the above, and as long as I can, I will keep doing it all. If something comes along and demands more of my time, I’ll reprioritize.
Until then I am like most people, exactly as busy as I want to be.
July 9th, 2010
FYI (and FMI)
About me: I have a desk job during the day, and write short stories on my laptop at night. I am, ergo, always a stone’s throw from the interwebs, and take most of my breaks there. Thus, during an average day, I can keep reasonably on top of my Google-reader blog page, and most of the Facebook action among my friends, too (Twitter continues to thwart me, but I do try on that front, too). Even if I’m not commenting, or clicking on every link/video/possibly non-work-friendly image, rest assured, I’m usually paying attention. But–not the past two weeks. Every now and then I get an internet minute, but I am mainly using those for my own selfish purposes (ie, blog posts, photo uploads).
So, blogland, I don’t know what’s going on with you! I am sure you’ve been just fine without me, but I would like to mention anyway: if you’ve announced anything life-altering in a public forum, something like marriage, moving to Nunavut, new book out, bbq explosion, or something so incredible I can’t even imagine it–I don’t know this. To prevent awkwardness at parties, you can always drop me a little note and tell me…or let it be a big crazy surprise when I discover you’ve burned off your eyebrows. Totally your call.
June 15th, 2010
Various Goodnesses
This is going to drive me crazy–The Literary Type is searching for a cover image for their “On the Road” issue, which is about travel and transit of all kinds, which is a much beloved them of mine (see last book, as well as the story of mine that’s actually in the “On the Road” issue). But I can’t come up with an image for them–why? Maybe you can come up with an image and solve the problem for us all…?
The National Post ran a piece We’ve Read Your Book, Now What? this weekend, about what authors would recommend people read *after* our own books. Lots of good ideas, including one from me!
I am going to see The New Pornographers in five hours. Well, that’s when the openers come on–TNP will I guess be later. I haven’t been to a concert in a couple years and I sort of forget how they work. But I’m still pretty sure I’m going to like it.
I feel less lousy on less caffeine today. The goal here, after all, is not to eradicate a nice thing from my life, but simply not to be dependent on it. And varying the time and amount of caffeine I consume is *like* not being dependent–isn’t it?
June 7th, 2010
How to have an awesome weekend
Step 1: Accept your limits: come home from work and lie around on Friday night. Talk on the phone with amusing people, maybe read a little bit of the Lists issue of The New Quarterly. Go to bed when you are tired and try not to look at the clock if you are prone to feeling guilty for going to be before 11. Or 10.
Step 2: Get up (reasonably) early without the alarm and read more TNQ over breakfast. Then check Facebook and finally figure out that The National is a band–before when Amy posted about them, you had thought they were a hockey team.
Step 3: Realize The National is your new favourite band. Dance!
Step 4: Finish a bunch of submissions, a grant application, and some emails. Feel really productive and totally justified in going to bed at the unnamed hour you did last night.
Step 5: Think long and hard about which post office you find less annoying. Go to that post office, even if it is a longer walk. It’s sunny out.
Step 6: Buy some pop and sit on a bench in the sunshine and read more TNQ.
Step 7: Go back home and do even more work, because you are such a superstar.
Step 8: Go find a a nice person and some high-quality take-out sushi.
Step 9: Eat the sushi beside the pretty fountain in the College Park courtyard while waiting for the Urban Bard production of Twelth Night to start.
Step 10: Watch the play. Do not get annoyed that you have to stand for pretty much the entire performance and oftentimes the enormous metal pillar/twinkle lights construction (signal to the mother ship of College Park?) obscures the show. The actors are still excellent and the red-headed twins are cute. And it is cool to see people wandering out of the mall and into Illyria carrying bags from Metro and Winners.
Step 11: Tough it out when it rains. It’s only a sprinkle.
Step 12: Win the after-play raffle (illustrated copy of Hamlet).
Step 13: Run away with your booty before it starts to really pour.
Step 14: Go to a party. Hug your friends. Make charming conversation, or have it made with you.
Step 15: Eat some ice-cream cake.
Step 16: Go to bed.
Step 17: Spend almost entire Sunday lying on couch. Go outside only to go somewhere called The Ice Cream Outlet, which is apparently ungooglable but VERY VERY GOOD (and cheap!)
Step 18: Feel happy.
Step 19: Get back to work.
May 21st, 2010
We are now entering the fifth power
I subscribe to a lunatic form of birthday numerology, which–while pleasing to me–has no known correlation whatsoever with reality. Sometimes when I start prattling on to someone about what their current age means for their fortunes, I assume they know I am being in(s)ane, but then they say, “Really?” and I get worried. So just to be clear:
I made this shit up.
I was good at high school math, not amazing, but good enough that I took it in university too. I was not good at university math, but I was a ways into it before I realized that. So now…I know a lot of low-level math stuff, but my life is pretty word-based. My only chances to use numbers are 1) calculating the tip in a restaurant, 2) tax season (I got reassessed yesterday–boo!), 3) birthdays.
My age is the number most central to my life, and I like thinking about it (certainly more central and more pleasant than my income, or my address, SIN, whatever). My mom and I even have an adorable algorithm that spits out the years in which our ages will be the reverse (diget-wise) of each other (this is possible because I was born in a year in which my mother’s age was divisble by nine–isn’t that cool? Did you just stop reading?)
All this is by way of saying, I am going to turn 32 on Sunday. Do you know what 32 is? Well, the subject line mentions it, but maybe you had a boyfriend/girlfriend in grade 9 and thus your math homework from that year does not loom in your memory as vividly as it does in mine.
32 is 25 or 2 x 2 x 2 x2 x2 or the only fifth power in the human lifespan!!! The next one is 263, possible mainly for trees and coral. I guess you could count age 1 as a fifth power, because it is all powers (all powerful?) but that seems like sort of cheating and anyway I didn’t get much out of math as an infant.
So this year is going to be a year unlike any other for me, unlike anything I’ve ever experienced…and yet, because it is so divisible, I think that 32 will contain much that is familiar as component parts, though perhaps in new forms.
This is where I figure it is ok if I believe my own mumbo-jumbo, but I have to FYI anyone who is listening to me without rolling their eyes that they probably shouldn’t (listen to me, not roll their eyes–they probably should do that).
Do I have a point? Oh, barely. I’m just really really excited to be 25. Though 31 (a prime, and therefore a year of strength due to indivisibility) was a pretty fantastic age, too. Actually, I liked 30 too…
Maybe mathiness is just excuse to talk about my birthday. I like other things about birthdays besides numbers…cake, glitter, gifts, hugs, balloons…
This is going to be a really good weekend, I think. The rest of the year, too.
April 24th, 2010
On Nostalgia and Homogeniety
AMT wrote a wistful post on nostalgia, which fit in perfectly with the current theme of my days lately, which is trying to remember what it feels like to be a teenager.
I keep thinking I do–all eager and nervous and twitchy and stuff–and then I realize that’s me now. It is so hard to recall how you felt/acted/thought back when you were a different person, particularly if you don’t think that person was all that different than your present day self.
But we are–I am pretty sure, though hazy, on this: people change more than they realize, and the parts of themselves they forget tend to be the ones that differ the most from the present day. This impression comes from having talked to a wide variety of people over the years, none of whom can recall being on top in high school. Everyone was teased, persecuted, trod upon, lonely and alone. I have rarely met anyone who says they were more or less fine in high school, and never to having been the sort of jerk that is more than fine and makes others feel bad about it–or wings French fries at their heads. Apparently, that’s the sort of thing you rinse out of your consciousness when you hit your 20s.
So I’m going to come right and make this bold pronouncement, nearly damning for a writer: I was ok with high school. It was not the best 5 years of my life, but I had some fun, some good friends, some good teachers, learned some stuff. I vaguely recall being teased in grade 9 for wearing a ballet top I bought at the Bay (I still have it) and I certainly never got invited to the coolest parties, but…so? It would’ve been weird if kids I didn’t know invited me to their parties, and anyway, I lived way out in the country and my dad would never have driven me. I hung around with folks I liked, ate lunch with them in the hall by the auto shops, edited the yearbook, and was left largely alone by everyone else.
I seriously worry this makes me a less interesting person to some people, which in itself is such a high school thought.
I am trying to get these memories back because I want to be able to “get” what is going on with my students. One of the hardest things to remember is conformity. It has been a very long time since I worried seriously about the ways I deviate from the status quo. I am not much of a rebel–I think I’m naturally a lot like the status quo–but not entirely, and who cares?
One of the great perks of one’s twenties as that there are so many different things to do and ways to live that it’s very hard to even *find* a standard to try to conform to. I know people who stayed in school for a decade straight after graduating high school, people who found jobs first and went to school when they could afford it, who dropped out immediately and those who never studied formally again after high school grad. I know people who married immediately after high school, after college, after travelling through Europe, after 6 or 10 or 2 years of dating, or barely any time at all. I know people who are politically opposed to marriage, who were fervently delighted when Canada legalized same-sex marriage, and those for whom the whole institution seems irrelevant. Friends my own age have kids in school, kids in diapers, kids in utero, cats, dogs, houseplants and (only one) guinea pig. People are cheerfully devoted to their jobs, wrathfully alienated from their jobs, climbing the corporate ladder, unemployed, underemployed, fascinated by their work or terrified of it. I know homeowners, couchsurfers (ok, we’re getting a little old for that), rooming-housers, apartment dwellers, parental-home dwellers, and perpetual travellers. I know people who think of poverty as only one car, and people who think of wealth as ordering dessert.
How am I supposed to conform to that? I can’t, so I don’t worry about it (and feel happy I have such interesting friends). What makes conformity an issue in high school, I think, is that by nature of the age you have a certain amount of it. Almost everyone lives with their parents, has to be at school at a certain time, takes basically the same classes, and, due to how neighbourhoods tend to work, has basically the same amount of money. They are limited in who they meet beyond their families and classmates, and exposed to a tonne of marketing about music, movies, and fashion, not to mention fastfood, cosmetics, etc.
Even when I was a weird kid, I had basically the same sort of shoes as everyone else–not exactly, and believe me everyone knew it, but I did in fact like a lot of what everyone else liked. There was not much else available to like–not that I knew of, anyway–and those Birkenstocky sandals *were* very nice.
It is actually not that hard to recall that perfectly natural assimilatory instinct–I want clothes I see people wearing on the bus all the time. But it is harder to transer that into the classroom, where kids are reluctant to raise their hands, share their ideas, read their work, or even admit to liking something, if they do not already have pre-approval from their peers. In some ways, me being really impressed with a particular student’s work is no joy for them, because it singles them out. There’s nothing more depressing than realizing that your too-loud compliment is being met with a glare, and you might not be seeing any more of this student’s so-good work. Argh.
This does seem to fade with the older kids–they’re happier to talk about what makes them/their work unique. They’re closer to their twenties, and the point in your life where it is not only acceptable, but desirable (positively ravenously so, at certain university parties) to be a touch odd.
Another weird part of my nostalgia is wondering if the decade without a status quo is coming to an end. I wonder because this nostalgic thinking led me check the Facebook profiles of a bunch of people I knew in high school (oh, what did we do with our creepy stalker tendencies before Facebook?) It’s actually really hard to tell what people are up to with the standard privacy settings, but two things I can tell you are popular are getting married and having babies–almost everyone’s profile picture was a wedding shot/ultrasound/baby pic. Intense.
The difference between grown-upitude and high school, of course, is that people care less what others do–both because they are more tolerant and openminded, and because they don’t have a lot of time to invest in writing a mean little song about some other adult’s lack of real estate savvy or whatever. But I’m trying to experiment with feeling a little bad about the ways I’m weird anyway–I thought it might bring me closer to my students.
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