Sometimes, I feel like a “bad” woman because I don’t know how to make crafts.
I feel like, someday, I’ll find a craft that I can do — a craft that I have a real passion for.
I’ve thought about making zines, but I’m not very handy with paper and scissors. I couldn’t even make paper snowflakes, back when I was in kindergarten.
I suppose, for me, writing is the closest I get to crafting, to creating, to making something out of nothing.
Two of the more (emotionally) devastating moments of my childhood involved pain. One situation involved physical pain, and the other situation involved the pain of embarrassment.
The first incident happened during a hospital visit. A nurse had to give me two shots — one in the back of each leg — to get me to calm down enough to have an MRI done. I was only five. Five.
The other situation wasn’t as terrible, but it involved me making a fool of myself. This was in third grade, when we still had a class specifically dedicated to reading. They gave us time to read in class, and I remember enjoying that part of the class. (I loved to read middle-grade books, which are still a marvel to me.)
I feel like middle-grade books are probably harder to write than picture books or YA books, because it’s so hard to write authentically and capture an eight- or nine-year-old’s attention. By the time you’re in middle school, you start to realize what feels fake, what feels real, what feels genuine, and what feels like moralizing. Or pandering.
Even in a time of confusion and growing pains, it seems like most tweens can figure out the difference between a gimmick and a gem. The good middle-grade books are definitely gems.
In spite of my passion for reading, I didn’t always like doing my reading class homework. One of our homework assignments involved preparing a paragraph that used at least two or three of that week’s vocabulary words. I hadn’t done the assignment, just because I’d simply forgotten to – and when it was time to share our paragraphs with the class, I decided to do an impromptu, off-the-cuff story.
This wasn’t like me at all — not having done my homework and giving an impromptu performance. It must’ve been an awful performance, because the teacher called me out and asked why I didn’t do the assignment the right way. I can’t remember what my punishment was, but … I’m sure I didn’t enjoy it.
That teacher was the kind of schoolmarm who made “lesser” students feel bad. But I was already very acutely aware of “my station” in the school’s social strata. By the time I left that elementary school, I was the only girl in my class who didn’t have a doctor for a parent.
My experiences there gave me an aversion to parochial education, too, which I find regressive for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with religion. (It’s the strict prissiness of it all. I’m fine with the pageantry, but I can’t stand the constant glaring and the constant finger-wagging.)
Anyway, I …
I suppose I had it relatively easy, if those are two of the “meaner” interactions I’ve had with other people. But they left an impression on me — and made me feel more aware of my own shortcomings — so that’s something.
If nothing else, I’ve learned to be less harsh with children. And that really is something.
I recently remembered the time that I wrote – in a feature piece for our high school newspaper – that “no culture is inherently superior to another culture.”
I was in ninth or tenth grade – I’m thinking that it was the very beginning of tenth grade, when I was still about fifteen. Picture a nerdy-looking, tall, kinda chubby fifteen-year-old, with frizzy hair and tiny little glasses. I was a dork — so picture the dorkiest teen imaginable. Now, picture this teenager sitting down with the newspapers’ editors and the club sponsor, and then picture them telling me to take that line out of the article.
I have to assume they asked me to take it out for one of two reasons. The first reason is that I may have unintentionally done a horrible job of explaining what I meant to say – that no one group of people is inherently better than another group, based solely (or in part) upon their religion, their food, their appearance, their clothing, their customs, etc. No one group is more intelligent than everyone else, or more stylish, or more sexy, or more “correct” in whatever way.
So, you know, I have to assume I did such a terrible job of explaining things that maybe I sounded like a biased American. I’m afraid they thought I could’ve been saying that no culture is superior to the “American way” or some other Tea Party-esque bullshit. I’m afraid that’s what happened, because at fifteen, I had lots of room to grow as a writer — and as a person. But I knew what I was trying to say – and I was trying to argue for a more open-minded … uh, mindset.
A more open-minded mindset, mind you.
The other option is that they understood exactly what I was saying, and that they made me cut it from my piece because they knew it would make some of the older readers in our community upset.
This was almost fifteen years ago, before people started getting riotously mad over the content in student publications. Nowadays, though, you hear stories about student journalists being pressured to take certain articles off their websites.
But in our day, the worst thing that happened to us – as far as pushback – was an angry admonishment from a teacher, or an advertiser wanting to quit paying for ad space. This happened once, to my knowledge. It was after we had two opinion pieces that included scandalous words like “damn” and “suck” – and one of these was simply part of the title of a movie, the ridiculous 2010 comedy Vampires Suck.
Oh, well. I can’t say we didn’t need the advertiser’s money. But we found more accommodating folks, who didn’t mind that kid’s say the suckiest things. We were able to write our opinion pieces in … uh, peace.
As I mentioned earlier, we did have to tone some stuff down. But …
I still get embarrassed when I think about how I often tried to be progressive without fully having the phrasing or the contextual knowledge to know how to express myself properly.
I still had the courage to go forward, to learn, to actually try to do better, without stumbling over myself to try to prove that my intentions outweigh other folks’ feelings and life experiences.
And I’m glad I had that — that willingness to keep listening and growing. I’m glad that I was willing to keep learning, and I’m glad that I’m still willing to learn.
Within the span of a week, I’ve found two uniquely-positioned whiteheads.
The first one was on my upper thigh. The second one was right in the corner of my mouth.
But today, I’ve found another one — right under my lower lip. It’s swollen to the point that it’s turning red. It looks like I have a fat lip.
Who knows what tomorrow will bring? A blister on my heel, most likely.
Sometimes, I feel like people willfully misunderstand me. It’s like they want to pick at me, or make me feel like I’ve somehow made a mistake — just because they didn’t listen to my initial explanation.
I still haven’t figured out why this happens. It doesn’t happen too terribly often — and it usually happens with the same people. I often wonder whether this means that I’m a poor communicator, or whether their willingness to understand things is just …
Look, I don’t think they lack the capacity to understand me. I think they lack the willingness to listen to me.
The best example of this is when I told someone about the show Derry Girls. It was just a one-off statement, like, “There’s this great show on Netflix that I think you’d like!” I realized they weren’t actually listening to me when, about thirty seconds later, they asked me, “What was that show you said you like? Dairy Queens?”
And — yes — this is one of the people who seems to intentionally not listen to the content and the context of what I have to say.
I always pretend like, “Whoops, maybe I should’ve been more clear! Hahahaha!”
But on the inside, I’m rolling my eyes so hard that Bug Out Bob would be impressed by the strength of my ocular reflexes.
As a white woman with Black ancestors — Black folks who lived a couple of centuries ago, folks who had a different lived experience than my own — I feel that …
I feel a certain way about lots of things.
I would like to think that even if I were “100% Swedish” or something like that, that I would care about the concerns of my Black sisters and brothers.
I do think, however, that being mindful of my own ancestors’ struggles has really opened my eyes to the everyday experiences of Black people. I’ve tried to put myself in the shoes of my Black ancestors — and I realized I could never fully understand their lived experience. But after realizing that, I realized that I should take more care to fully consider the things that my Black friends and acquaintances face on a daily basis.
Now, I’m basically a long-distance Melungeon. I’m sure there are people who look at me and “see it,” just as there are people who look at me and think I’m Greek.
I’m always mistaken for being Greek. I’m not, though. It’s not a bad thing to be — and I really like tzatziki sauce! But I am not a Greek person. I did like the Big Fat Greek Wedding movie, though. The first one.
Because I try to be considerate and mindful, I think about things like unintentional biases, and about the indignity of microaggressions.
Here’s a silly and slightly convoluted example. I’ll be walking, tugging at my shirt or my skirt, and pulling at my leggings to smooth out the bulge of my belly. And then I’ll swing my purse around in front of me, to hide my stomach or the too-long slit in my skirt.
Twice I’ve done this in front of Black teens, and I think, “My God, they’ll think that this white bitch is a racist.”
I always try to make a big show of patting my belly, too, which I think makes me look weird. Or pregnant. Or both.
Heck, I’d rather be the weird pregnant lady than the mean racist lady.
I try to be mindful of what I do, because I never want to be the mean racist lady. I want to always try to do better and be better. As I should.
As we should.
Forget about the black cat/golden retriever energy dichotomy.
If you have a friend group, which one of these are you: the stray cat, the nocturnal bat, or the pizza rat?
I’m the first one. I would roam from house to house, collecting food — and hearts — wherever I roam.
On Valentine’s Day, I read that piece in the New York Times about all the different ways people quietly show their love for their partners.
Going off of frequency-of-mentions alone, the paper would have us believe that the secret to a happy marriage is this: brush your teeth together every morning and/or every night.
Twice daily, y’all.
Even if they’re on a business trip, even if they’re visiting family on the other side of the world — that’s what FaceTime is for.
Are you prepared for the storm of brushing, flossing, and lovemaking?! 🪥😬
Driving the boat right now — but instead of taking shots directly from a bottle of D’ussé, I’m taking the crumbs from the bottom of my box of chicken nuggets, tilting the whole thing backwards, and dumping it all directly into my mouth.
Very Superior Old Poultry
Someday, I imagine I will win the Nobel Conflict Prize for goading the incels, the gym bros, the passport bros, and the guys still using Twitter into fighting with each other when I go on Facebook and post this:
“Name any males that were in shape in high school AND who stayed in shape after high school. Saying that you had a late growth spurt or had gains after your wife left don’t count.”
Jamais Mayville