Honest Scrap Thingamadoodle

Well, Josh tagged me with this meme, so I guess I'd better do it. It's not like I have 152 post ideas or anything. I won't be tagging folks or anything (so I'm totally breaking the rules--hence, I'm not "accepting the award"), but I'm sure I can think of at least ten honest things to say. Whether or not they're old news depends upon how well my readers know me (or how often I've bored them with details).

1. Steve talked about pretending that his life was fully televised--my fantasy was similar, but it was more like I was always being interviewed. Whenever I had alone time (such as on the toilet or in the shower), the interview answers would begin. Sometimes I'd play the interviewer, too. Oh, and the person being interviewed wasn't always me. Often it was a character in a story I was formulating--based on a movie, on recent news events, etc.

2. To be painfully honest, I occasionally still slip into interview/story mode. It's the writer in me. I always start in the middle of a conversation, too, like there's this invisible ellipsis hanging in the air between conversations.

3. Though there are piles of clothes in the floor of my closet waiting to be washed right now, every piece of hung clothing is perfectly organized--not by color (that would be too anal)--but by type: sleeveless shirts, vests, short-sleeved t-shirts, short-sleeved shirts with buttons, three-quarter-sleeved shirts w/o buttons, etc....

4. I have a ponytail in a bag that I meant to send to Locks of Love almost three years ago. I was really disappointed that the hairdresser didn't take the time to cut individual pieces to make it all one length, and I was afraid LoL wouldn't accept a layered ponytail--so the wind was totally taken out of my sails about sending it. I have successfully sent at least one ponytail to them, though.

5. One of my family's favorite shows when I was a kid was "Greatest American Hero," a show about a bumbling superhero who could barely fly. I still love the theme song. So Eighties!

6. Saige and I used to try to sing every song from i 2 (eye), our favorite Michael W. Smith tape, in order, from "Hand of Providence" to "Pray for Me."

7. One day in middle school, I refused to allow Saige to borrow my HUGE silver earrings unless she promised to call them aquatacian (a word I made up) earrings all day long. I made sure to have various people at school ask her about her earrings so that she'd have to use the word.

8. My sense of humor is pretty particular. I mostly love wordplay, not sarcasm or nastiness, though the occasional bit of over-the-top silliness (a la Amanda & Melanie videos) will get to me. I'm pretty sure I'll need the man I marry to think I'm funny, and I'll need to "get" his sense of humor too, whether he's a regular comedian or not.

9. I'm addicted to paper towels. I've gotten better, but sometimes I'll just carry them around and forget they're in my hand or my pocket. I seem to have inherited this trait from my grandfathers, whose TV trays or recliner areas were often littered with Viva or Brawny towels that were wrinkled up but still good.

10. One of the ways I conquered some of my OCDish behaviors years ago was to make myself use the same towel more than once (I used to wash them every time). Washcloths are another story. :)

Guess that's enough weirdness for one post.

152 insights

Seeing as I am only on my fortieth post, I have made the decision that I shall end at 152, as I jokingly considered at the onset of this venture. Of course, since it has taken me nearly a year and a half to get just over a fourth of that number, I guess I won't being discontinuing the blog any time soon.

Still, this number gives me a goal to shoot for, an end to anticipate, an inevitably anticlimactic moment to await. Maybe I'll even give away a "You've Got Mail" gift basket to mark the occasion. I'm already planning it:

• the movie, of course
• the soundtrack
• a copy of Pride and Prejudice with a scarlet rose
  
• Boy, by Roald Dahl
• a pop-up dinosaur book
  
• hot tea and a mug
• a small Starbucks gift card
  
• Echinacea and Vitamin C
• Tic-Tacs
• Scotch tape
• a bouquet of sharpened pencils
• daisies or daisy-themed items
• a box of Kleenex
• an embroidered handkerchief
  
• Anne of Green Gables
• Blue, by Joni Mitchell, on which "River" appears
• "twinkle lights" and funky ornaments
• a mango
• a Clark bar
• a lone reed
• an "I ♥ NY" item
• a dollar
  
• the Shoe books by Noel Streatfeild, except for The Skating Shoes (It really is out of print, and you won't believe how much it costs on Amazon.)

Okay, so this basket is getting really huge and expensive, but it may be years away, right? Perhaps I'll have married my rich old man by then. Tell me, fellow diehard fans, have I left anything important out? I mean, that's affordable and small? Cans of olive oil are too big, and caviar is, of course, out of the question!

How old is way too old? (or way too young?)

Yesterday my wonderful doctor, who said she's no matchmaker and doesn't usually do this sort of thing, suggested setting me up with a pharmaceutical sales rep she knows. He's a great guy, never married, who's been waiting for the right one. He really wants to get married and have children. The problem? He's in his 40s! She doesn't know whether he's 41, or 45, or (gasp!) even older.

So whaddya say? Would one blind date hurt? Or is he just way too old? I've got the biblical example of Boaz and Ruth, I suppose, on the side of going for it (and according to tradition, Joseph and Mary). Then there's the literary examples of Emma and Mr. Knightley, Jane and Rochester, etc. But ewww.

Such a weird age, 30. Especially when you're a total innocent (and a young-looking one at that) in the dating world. I had a former student (about 20 yrs. old) practically flirting with me the other night on facebook, telling me I wasn't old and talking about all the cougars at the bars in Statesboro. This after a sixth grader had told me the day before that I'd look like a model if my hair were blowing in the wind and I got some fly (or "fie" (fire)--don't know which term he used) clothes, not those old-lady church clothes I wore to work! Don't worry. I shushed him and explained the inappropriateness. No Mary Kay LeTourneau here.

But still. Seems I've always had little children and old men in love with me. Very few fellas of the right age have ever asked me out. Am I old before my time...or just frightfully immature?

Got any suggestions for dating my age--as opposed to my shoe size (10) or my hip measurement (ahem...)???

So much for using big words...

TV Reviews

Ubiquitous Metonymy (or, shut up and find a new way to talk about me!!)

Metonymy (defined here) is a useful and sometimes lovely tool in our language. Because of it, we have these lines from Robin Hood (forever etched in my memory by the LP of the movie we absolutely wore out as children): "Traitor to the crown?!! That crown belongs to King Richard!" In these two sentences, crown moves from a metonymic reference to royalty (Prince John at the time) to a literal reference to the crown that "keeps slipping down around that pointed head." Metonymy allows us to refer to President Bush's administration as The White House. Such references to the domicile on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue make sense to us in a kind of shorthand: we automatically register that a sentence talking about "The White House's revised plan for an economic bailout" isn't talking about the house at all.

So, yeah, metonymy's a good thing. I love it. I love that Fleet Street still stands for the London press, even though the actual street is mainly shops now, and the papers do their printing elsewhere. I love that the term Wall Street makes it easy for us to refer to our financial system in such an efficient way. English is cool like that.

But...(and you knew a but was coming!) since when did the American people become Main Street? Oh, yeah, I'm sure it was cute the first fifty or sixty times folks made this reference. I'm sure its originators were thinking, "Look, repetition is cool: I repeat the word street, I get everyone's attention. I reference a street that invokes small-town America and baseball and apple pie, ZING! Now they're listening." Of course, one has to think that if a politician or pundit had made this choice back in the Ozzie and Harriet days, the street would have been Maple or Elm, but we have Rod Serling and Wes Craven to thank for Main Street's making the cut.

So somebody started saying it. Obama may have been the first, but who knows? Anyway, he started saying it. And then McCain started saying it. And then every single newscaster on the planet started saying it. And after everybody started saying it, something fundamentally changed about what Main Street was, and is, and evermore shall be. It went from somebody's cutesy idea of a soundbite-worthy metaphor to straight-up metonymy, a convenient shorthand for middle-class America that has become about as common as, well, apple pie.

It doesn't get on my nerves because it's stupid, though it is. I mean, if we're going to be reduced to a street name, it might as well be a name that makes sense. Isn't Main Street usually comprised of businesses, restaurants, the post office, etc.? The folks using this shorthand aren't talking about small-town business, but about our houses, our bank accounts. We are Main Street.

Nope. I'm not reacting to the stupidity of it, but the ubiquity. We are lazy creatures. Blessed with the vast resources of our amazing English language, we consign ourselves to the vapid metaphors someone else impressed us with a few days ago. Makes me think of Jim Carrey's line from Dumb and Dumber, when the waitress defines the soup du jour as "the soup of the day": "That sounds good. I'll have that." It's kind of like plagiarism, isn't it? I mean, I just don't understand why EVERYBODY has to say the same thing in the same way! Do reporters and politicians repeat these buzzwords and catchphrases because they want us to catch something, or are have they themselves been overtaken by the viral words that latch on to those with the weak immune system of poor vocabulary?

I'm not saying I'm immune by any stretch of the imagination--my vocabulary is rather limited, my metaphors often threadbare. In fact, I completely understand the malady. Several regrettable words remain so ingrained in my speech that I may be attempting to expunge them for the rest of my life: like (for as if), cool, totally, etc. Fortunately, I totally let go of proverbial like way before it stopped being cool to everyone else.

But I don't make my living talking to thinking adults. My every word is not judged, except by God and maybe the occasional reader of this blog (and you're all occasional readers now that I never post!) The press, the pundits, the future President (whoever he may be)--all these folks are smart enough to figure out how to kill the overkill and at least move us to MLK Boulevard, or the 'burbs. Or better yet, lose the metonymy and just call us who we are: Americans, taxpayers, voters, PEOPLE.

White lady rap

I've warned some of my classes that every time they start to beat on the tables they will be subject to a lame white lady rap. I hadn't had to follow through with my threat until yesterday, when my sixth graders would not stop making beats and quietly mumbling raps. So Mi' D started spitting rhymes:

It's lame, it's lame
Mi' Dean and her rhymes is lame
White lady oughtta feel ashamed
If it weren't for Taylor and James*
Fifth block could be reclaimed

Yes, I know I only rhymed the same sound, but it impressed sixth graders for me to come up with that pretty much on the spot (yeah, I did have the "lame" bit in my head already, but they didn't know that). See, I'm writing...

*my rowdiest students in that class--not an ironic reference to my beloved Mr. Taylor

Lessons from my job (warning, boring post ahead)

So, I know I haven't posted in forever, that it's more like 35 insights into my soul rather than 152, that my faithful readers have all but given up on me (hello, Erin, are you reading this?)...but I just haven't been inspired to write. Even though I love writing essays and poems, I have never been much of a journaler. I'm such a prolific talker, you know--so good and analyzing and over-analyzing myself and my little world verbally that I've never done it much on paper. I've journaled a good bit in the past when I had a ridiculous new crush on someone, or was going through some kind of crisis, but besides that, no. I've often thought that if I become a famous writer some day (uh, Leah...that would require that you do some WRITING--hush, self!), that there won't be much to publish in the way of personal papers. Of course, if I had the kind of job that gave me lots of time for reflection, I'd make myself write everyday, no matter what. I've had some excellent results in the past from forcing myself to write. But I'm not there right this minute.

Anyway, folks have been wondering about my job. Well, I've learned a few things in 9 weeks.

1. South Georgia is not Middle Georgia. Some of the comments about the South that I've bristled at all my life seem a little bit more warranted down that-a-way.

2. I am not an artist. I love art, and I like to make crafts, but I am a word person. I miss talking and thinking about words and ideas.

3. I was not meant to be an art teacher. Paper has always been a problem for me, what with all the written assignments of the language arts classroom--stacks to be graded, stacks to be returned, etc. Now there's paper everywhere. And broken crayons. And charcoal dust. And glue. And paint. And clay. And bits of wire. And crumpled up pieces of Leah's sanity.

4. I'm done with the public school (or private, for that matter) classroom. I've tried different grades, different subjects, and different schools, and I'm convinced that this profession is not something I want to spend any more of my life on. I haven't ruled out college, but we'll see.

5. God is sovereign. Yes, I already knew this, but I've realized that whether this was a horrible decision that He's working together for good, or the right decision that just happens to be really hard, divine purposes are being accomplished. Whether it's loving a kid who doesn't get much attention at home, or learning how to be more disciplined, or sharpening my French skills (by podcast!) on my long commute (yes, there could be divine purpose in learning French!!!), or being a good friend to some of my colleagues, there's a reason for this season. Pray that I'll keep this attitude and get my mind right. So far, I haven't been handling it too well.