Jennifer studied Humanities at the College of Santa Fe, and Anthropology at Hamilton College
A friend from high school told me in the last couple years or so, Jen – when you were 15 you acted like you were 45. Curmudgeon, snarky, quick to rise in anger and righteous indignation. I have worked on most of those in the last 30 years. Tried even harder since I turned 40. So, this birthday year should feel quite appropriate. I have arrived. Comfortable in my own skin. But this is the year 2020, none of us are too comfortable these days. As Kurt Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim, from Slaughter-House Five, suffers from becoming unstuck in time, I think so do well all, once again, in this time of America’s reckoning that we haven’t been doing so well as a country, for like, possibly, the whole time.
For many of us, this is nothing new and a very real truth and experiences handed down in American families for generations. For example, and this may be a triggering question – Did your Daddy go to College or Viet Nam? Or like my bio-Dad, just forgot to show up to the whole parenting thing from day one? Let your answers and all your thoughts and feelings roll through the variations.
I knew this early on to be a determinant of whether you were accepted or not.
When do we break through the accepted norms and the social conventions to confront, address, vent, ask for clarification, seek respect when it is essential and when it is most needed?
I have little faith this can happen gracefully and with mutual respect, across sections and sectors. Somebody is going to get offended. My experience and wisdom show me the offended will hold this against the ‘speaker – upper’, and there will be consequences, by golly. Rarely legitimate and meaningful communication. This behavior, to me, is the very definition of microaggressions and it is the foundation for the network of behaviors that contributes to institutionalized oppression of all shapes and sizes.
I am too old now to use goading, attacking, snarking, back channel gossip, ostracizing, gas lighting, temper tantrums, and posturing to attempt the above. Reminds me of the 8th grade lunch table. I was not good at these then.
However, I have noticed that much of the privileged, socially acceptable circles of society thinks it is simply a fine way to be, regardless of what year it is and how old they are in that year. So, let’s go back to 8th grade.
In 8th grade, my mom, nana, and I were living in western, rural Virginia. I had just finished four years of studying a locally based martial art and competing, somewhat successfully, in numerous tournaments around the VA/MD/DC area. This type of school relied on students to teach other students, while being led by a paid instructor. Uniforms were expensive. Weapons were expensive. The class prices rose each year. Travel and accommodations to tournaments were expensive. My mom took on a second job as a cocktail waitress at the local small-town bar. Her other job was 2nd shift at the factory where they made colostomy bags. Stories she brought home from her work shifts saved me years of heartache, pain, injury, and poor decisions. The world was indeed indifferent to my needs, find the good people, rely on yourself to make your way. Of course, I was taught to be polite and suffer fools for “they will get theirs, but not by me.” And bonus, it was fun to laugh at the foolish behaviors of adults on the car rides home.
It was time to quit karate. The student teaching the younger students, but not being taught new katas to test for rank, while paying class fees was too much…injustice? Inbalance? Unfair? Didn’t learn the word “exploitation” until we moved to Schenectady the following year. Something like – they are using me to teach the class and holding me back at the same time. Huh. Why? Some of the folks on the scene acted rather weird around me whereas they were not acting weird around me a year or two before. Ok.
Mom and I talked calmly and honestly about what we were each feeling and made a mutual decision. After I quit, we did visit a local tournament as I wanted to say goodbye to some people. An older couple who we saw at tournaments acted shocked that I quit…really carrying on. Inflated complements. Fawning? This is weird. Rather than just say – it was a good to study with you, 12-year-old Jennifer, good luck with the rest of middle school – they suggest, right in front of my whole family, that they should send me to live with them, hundreds of miles away in another state, so I could personally study under the grandmaster himself. They could arrange everything, they said. In this unqualified moment of family solidarity among mom, nana, stepdad and myself – this was a kind but insane idea. Who are you people? She is 12. Which I think Mom may have said. Good luck with the rest of your life folks. Part of me thought that I was really super good at karate but most of me learned how my gut felt, when presented with “too good to be true, there’s a catch.”
We left the tournament and went home. So, 30 years later, I look up the name of the tradition and leaders on the internet. See if the schools are still in business. Turns out, the now adult son, a few years younger than me, of one of the other local masters, whom I did study and test under on occasion, was going to prison for a very long time. I’m not going to illustrate his crimes in this blog. However, in the moment that I read about this, I knew exactly why my mom refused to let me go to tournament by myself, in the care of these other adults. At the time, I thought she was paranoid and just didn’t trust my 11-year-old self. Nope. Not the tragic case at all. Thank you, Mom.
That same year, we were assigned to research a topic of our choice, approved by the teacher. Write a minimum 7-page paper and give a 10-minute speech. I read the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, mainly in the local college library (no internet, no home computers, a Brother Word Processor the size of a microwave oven and the screen the size of my smart phone.) My topic was the concentration camps of Germany during WWII. Their names, locations, and a list of the atrocities that occurred in each. My paper was 15 pages, my speech was 30 minutes. I was crying in the last few minutes at the podium, finishing up an impassioned plea to never let something like this happen again. The teacher and a couple students chuckled at me for a bit. I got an A.
I graduated middle school and we moved to upstate NY. Where I joined Choir! Drama club! Literary magazine! Drank in all the alternative / punk / new wave I could handle. Read all the revolutionary books. Wrote papers on most of them. Busy social life in the high school lunch yard and at play rehearsal with the fellow outcasts, freaks, geniuses, poets, queers; volunteered at the hospital; had a part time job. Graduated 11th in my class of 256 and geared up to go to a good private junior Ivy League college (riding the magic carpet of merit and need scholarships and student loans) to best prep myself to take over the world. Affect righteous change! Right America’s and humanities’ wrongs and get paid modestly but, not yuppie range, to do this every day for a job.
In one of the last English classes my senior year, the teacher warned us about the impending movement in academia of “political correctness”. Likened it to the forcefully diminished language as a tool for totalitarianism as demonstrated in George Orwell’s 1984. I was like, um, ok, huh? In that term’s paper for his class, I compared the themes of female sexuality from an Alice Walker novel and a Nikki Giovanni collection. I got a C-. Lowest grade I received on any assignment, in any class except AP Calc. Huh. Hmm. Ok. Well never mind you, teacher, I’m ready to go to college to save the world from itself, now!
I’ve been soothing this particular inner child of mine, during my 2020 Pandemic / End of Civilization as We Know It sabbatical. She’s responding well to the treatment. Peace.
Curiosity Killed the Cat 