Two Confessions In One

I dye my hair. Actually, I pay someone else to do it for me, so maybe this is more like three confessions in one. Once, when I was young, my hair was the color I now pay someone to dye it. But in high school I started noticing a gray hair here and there, in college I started noticing several more, and by the time I was 22 I had what I considered to be an unreasonable amount of gray hair for a 22-year-old. My friends assured me you couldn't even tell I had gray hair. They were lying.

I know this because one day, as I was doing some grocery shopping, I realized that the guy stocking the produce section kept looking at me. Not looking at me like checking me out, but looking at me like he was confused. I caught his eye and he said, "I'm sorry I keep staring. Do you mind if I ask how old you are?," to which I replied, "22." "Yeah," he said as if that settled it, "you have such a young face but then you have all that gray hair." "You don't talk to women much, do you?" I huffed, and then I went straight home and made a hair appointment.

This hair-dyeing thing takes a while too. You have to sit there for about 30 minutes to let the dye sink in, or do whatever it does (I think it penetrates the hair shaft, but that was really just an excuse to use "shaft" and "penetrate" in the same sentence, because, really, why should cheesey romance novelists have all the fun?). Anyway, I used to take a book with me to the hairdresser so that I'd have something to do during the penetration portion of the procedure. Then I discovered Glamour magazine.

I subscribe to several publications: Rethinking Schools, The Believer, and occasionally Utne or Mother Jones. I'll often pick up a random copy of National Geographic, Time, or Newsweek. All of which is to say, I'm not really a Glamour kinda girl. No one I currently know would describe me as glamorous, nor could that term have been accurately applied to me at any point in my life. Cute, maybe, or crunchy, but definitely not glamorous.

Glamour bills itself as the magazine "for young women interested in fashion, beauty and a contemporary lifestyle." I'm not even remotely interested in any of that shit. If you looked at my Friendster profile, you know that I hate both electricity and modern conveniences. And although Glamour offers me to the opportunity to vote for things like my favorite naked actor, I'm not the kind of girl who even has a plain old favorite actor, let alone a favorite naked actor.

None of this, however, prevents me from enjoying the hell out of Glamour magazine while I'm getting my hair done. I once even bought my own copy (make that four confessions) after I skimmed through an article at the hairdresser entitled "This is the Year You'll Get a Great Body." Unfortunately, as it turns out, getting a great body requires that you actually do something (only 15 minutes of something, to be fair to Glamour), and I'm not nearly that displeased with the body I already have.

I had a hair appointment last week and I was looking forward to my Glamour fix. But, horror of horrors, Glamour wasn't in the magazine rack. My hairdresser noticed my distress, but mistook it. "Most of that's smut," she apologized, "let me get you something better" and handed me Gourmet. I sort of read the Gourmet, but mostly I glared at the other women when they weren't looking, just in case one of them had my Glamour. Gourmet wasn't bad, in fact, it had some pretty good recipes. It's just that none of them were for how to get the most out of your little black dress, 12 little things that make sex so much better, or how to eat like a man and still look like a woman. By which I mean that it sucked.

You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

My younger sister Laura, who is both a high school guidance counselor and a recovering die-hard Republican, and I just had a conversation about how No Child Left Behind is destroying public education.

Laura: Yeah, all because of that stupid George Bush.

Me: Who you voted for. Twice.

Laura: I didn't vote for him twice!

Me: Liar liar pants on fire.

Laura: No, the first time around I voted for Clinton.

Me: That's interesting. Because the first time around Clinton wasn't running.

Laura: Well I voted for Clinton when he ran against the first Bush.

Me: No you didn't. You couldn't vote then.

Laura: Of course I could.

Me: (mentally counting back) It was 1992. I couldn't vote then.

Laura: Well, I voted ahead. I think the first time I could vote I voted for Clinton. And then I voted for that Kilgerry guy.

Me: Kilgore?

Laura: Yeah.

Me: Great. He ran for governor of Virginia. Last fall. And he was crazy.

Laura: Well, who ran against Bush the first time?

Me: Gore.

Laura: Oh yeah. I definitely didn't vote for him. Who ran against him the second time?

Me: Kerry.

Laura: That's right, I said Kilgerry. Yeah, I think I voted for him.

Me: Liar liar pants on fire.

Laura: Okay, so I'm not as smart as you and Brian (our brother)! Big deal!

At least she admits that smart people don't vote for Bush.

Oh, and PS, I love my sister, so I'm not making fun of her in a mean way. She just proofread this and laughed her ass off. And as she proofread, I said, "You voted for Kilgore?!" But she didn't. "I just combined some names," she explained.

Teaching As A Subversive Activity

"Think as I think," said a man,

"Or you are abominably wicked; You are a toad."

And after I had thought of it,

I said, "I will then, be a toad."

--Stephen Crane

Lulu, my buddy in the blogosphere, recently did a post about the crazyChristian home schooling Duggar family. Her post made me laugh, and the Duggars gave me ammunition for an argument I frequently make about both home schooling and private schooling: they should be illegal.

Students belong in public school regardless of their parents’ political or religious beliefs. The mission of public schools is to educate citizens for participation in democracy, or at least that's what Jefferson said. The mission of home schools -- and to a somewhat lesser extent private schools -- is to insulate children from the other so that they don't stray too far from their parents' values. If the motto of public education is "Question Authority!," the motto of home and private education is "think as I think."

Democracy does not work with a citizenry that's unwilling to question authority. In fact, questioning authority is at the very heart of democracy. If parents are permitted to teach their children at home or to send their kids to schools that discourage students from questioning authority or thinking for themselves, democracy suffers.

When I taught Government, I used to post what I called a "better world tip of the week," a thing that, if everyone did it, the world would be a better place. Occasionally it would be 7:15 on a Monday morning and I wouldn't be able to think of one and the kids would be coming into the classroom and I would just write "Question Authority!" on the chalkboard. Again. "Can we question your authority?," my kids would always ask. "Go crazy," I'd respond, "question yourself silly." And they'd question my authority all week long. It was great. I like to think that a lot of those kids are out there somewhere, grown up and questioning authority (but in a nice way).

Can you picture the Duggars conducting morning lessons in the face of "Question Authority!"? Can you conceive of how they might explain to their 16 kids, while the chalkboard shouts "Question Authority!", that homosexuality is something for which its practioners will eventually burn in hell? Try instilling the message that women should be subservient to men with "Question Authority!" looming over your shoulder. Imagine arguing that the president is always right and that real patriots don't ask questions while the ghost of Jefferson flits about, whispering, "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

Indoctrination (or, as the Duggars call it, "training") is not education. And accepting what other people tell you without thinking about it yourself first is not learning. I have a quotation posted in my classroom: "Teach the young people how to think, not what to think." (I can't remember who said it, nor can I find it through Google.) Public schools, although they sometimes fail at the task, at least attempt to teach kids how to think, while home and private schools are largely focused on making sure they transmit what to think.

It was through public school that I learned there were points of view other than those of my parents. Public school teachers invited me to consider whether the US was justified in dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, whether Atticus Finch should have represented that black guy, whether Bill Clinton would be a better president than George Bush (part one), and whether the Rolling Stones rocked more than the Beatles. It was in public school that I discovered both Ayn Rand and Karl Marx, and through public school that I decided I love a radical named Thomas Jefferson best.

In short, public school changed me. It made me better than I would have been otherwise. Not because I abandoned my parents' conservatism (although that is a bonus), but because I learned to think for myself. My sister attended almost all the same public schools that I did and also learned to think for herself. It just happens that she thinks like my parents.

I'm aware that public schools are not without their problems, and that some private schools -- especially in urban areas like my own -- are a lot more academically rigorous. But one of the purposes of education is for people to learn tolerance and acceptance. I’m not sure how one learns to tolerate differences in religion, culture, or ideas if one never has to examine those differences. If I shielded her eyes every time my (hypothetical) child encountered something that was contrary to my own beliefs, how in the world would my child ever learn to get along in a world full of differences? And are my beliefs so lame that I have to make sure they're not challenged?

Plus, don't you feel sorry for these kids? They seem like nice kids, right? Kids who deserve to grow up normal. Send them to school, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!

Message From My Hairdresser

When I got home from work today I had a message on my machine from my hairdresser:

Hey Megan, this is Terri from Complements. Listen, give me a call when you get in, or, om, call me at home at [her phone number]. I got this gun lighter [?!] here for a week and I think you should hook up wit him, have a drink. Just give me a call back. Bye.

So the next time anyone wants to give me shit about driving an hour and a half in the off-season to get my hair done, I can remind them that my hairdresser is a hell of a lot cooler than the average hairdresser who merely cuts your hair.

And if anyone knows what a gun lighter is, please enlighten me.

Update 07.20.06: I listened the message again (sober) and it turns out my hairdresser didn't say anything about a "gun lighter." What she said was "I got this guuuuuuuuy that's here for a week. . ." My hairdresser's from The North -- sometimes I can't understand her. More importantly, the guuuuuuuuy is not a house-guest or even someone she knows. He's just a guy who came in to get his hair cut who she thought was cute. When he asked what there was to do around here, she suggested she had the perfect girl to show him the town and called me. However, in trying to sell him to me, she mentioned that he was "very corporate America," so obviously I won't be calling him. Plus he might be a serial killer who just happens to enjoy a good haircut.

Know Your Audience

The bookstore I work at during the summer recently opened its third location on a part of the beach that gets more year-round, local traffic. This means we now have a store with enough regular traffic to support carrying magazines. My friend Meaghan was working at the new location yesterday, and I swung by to meet her for drinks after work. Together we perused the magazine section, which is extensive. We have a ton of magazines on all manner of subjects.

“Hey, do we have porn?” I asked Meaghan. “Just gay porn,” Meaghan replied. “Whoa, I was only kidding!” I said as Meaghan pulled several plastic-wrapped magazines off the shelf to show me. The first few looked like regular old magazines that just happened to have hunky naked guys on the front. The only way you could tell the magazines were geared toward gay men and not straight women was by their headlines (“Big Balls and the Men Who Love Them,” for example). But the last one Meaghan showed me made me blush. “Oh my GOD!” I gasped, covering my eyes, “why do we have this?” (For the record, I’m a bit of a prude – a couple engaged in heterosexual intercourse on the cover of a magazine would have elicited the same response.)

Here’s the conversation that then ensued:

Meaghan: Bill [the owner] thinks we need to reach out to the gay community.

Me: By selling them porn?!

Meaghan: Apparently.

Me: Isn’t that just perpetuating the stereotype that gay guys are nothing but sex-crazed deviants?

Meaghan: Pretty much.

Me: Wouldn’t having a gay and lesbian literature section be a slightly better way of reaching out to the gay community?

Meaghan: I’ve already had this exact argument with Bill and gotten nowhere. It’s like arguing with him about the Women’s section.

Me: Don’t get me started.

Because we’re talking about a man whose Women’s Studies section includes Dr. Laura’s The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands (which I always put in Humor); an entire shelf full of books devoted to looking good, with patriarchy-busting titles such as How Not to Look Fat, Dress Your Best, Makeup Makeover, and What Not to Wear; and nary a copy of The Feminine Mystique.

At least he got the gay community some porn. I’m stuck with Put on Your Pearls, Girls.

Summer Love: 92°, 94% Humidity

While 92° heat coupled with 94% humidity may not seem appealing to you, the only way to fully enjoy a gin and tonic (Tanqueray, with extra lime, please) is by sitting in the oppressively sweltering heat on a deck overlooking the ocean, wearing as little as possible and occasionally lifting the hair from your neck or holding the glass to your forehead to cool yourself. It's especially nice if you're ordering doubles and the waiter's charging you for singles.

In Response To A Letter To The Editor, Vol. III

From the Virginian Pilot, Sunday 07.16.06

To the Editor:

Carl (letter, July 9) thinks it is un-Christian to oppose gay marriage after he and his wife witnessed their gay neighbor care lovingly for his partner dying of AIDS.

As a longtime Christian, I support the proposed amendment to the Virginia Constitution banning gay marriage because Jesus made it very clear that he came not to abolish the Old Testament, but to complete it.

Opposition to sodomy in the Old Testament is clear enough, including a commandment that says it is an abomination for a man to lie with a man.

In our day, we also know from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta that sodomy is the chief means of spreading the HIV infection, which causes AIDS.

It is a severe distortion of the truth to say that Jesus approved of sodomy because he approved of the Old Testament commandment to love one's neighbor as oneself.

Gay marriage is nothing more than an attempt to exalt sodomy to the level of lawful intercourse between man and wife. All young men should be warned that sodomy is much more than sterile intercourse; it is potentially lethal and always dangerous to health and well-being. [Carl] is my witness.

--Leland, Norfolk

To Leland:

Ah, Leviticus. Such a lovely book. That's the one that says slavery is okay but wearing clothes made of two different fabrics isn't, and that it's also an abomination to eat shellfish, right? Yep, it is. I checked. Slavery - Lev. 25:44, Clothing - Lev. 19:19, Shellfish - Lev. 11:10-11. Oh, and I also found this: "You shall not oppress your neighbor." (Lev. 19:13)

So I can see how you would be confused.

I'm no biblical scholar, but I'm pretty sure that when Jesus said to love our neighbors as we love ourselves he meant it. And I like to think that God sent his only son not just to die for our sins, but also to make up for what a dick he was in the Old Testament.

You can follow the teachings of Christ, or you can stick with the vengeful God of the Old Testament, but you really can't have them both.

Now, on to the business of sodomy. (There's a sentence I've never uttered before.)

First of all, nobody said Jesus approved of sodomy. Mr. Hansen was simply pointing out that it's none of your goddamn business how your neighbor likes to get it on, you're just supposed to love him as you do yourself. That means your neighbor gets to have the same rights as you. It's a logical extension of the love thy neighbor commandment. I know logic is not your strong suit, so just trust me on this one.

Secondly, what we know from the CDC is that unprotected sex, both hetero- and homosexual, is the chief means of spreading HIV. According to the CDC, "Through 2004, of all cases of HIV infection in the United States reported to CDC, 34% were attributed to male-male sexual contact, 14% to injection-drug use, and 20% to heterosexual contact." I'll give you that 34% is slightly higher than 20%, but certainly not high enough to run around calling sodomy the "chief means of spreading the HIV infection." I'm sure you didn't mean to, but you're coming dangerously close to that very un-Christian argument that HIV is God's way of punishing gay people for their supposedly aberrant behavior, and that they deserve this punishment. Only Pat Robertson and his American Taliban pals are still making that argument.

Thirdly, gay marriage (or, as people who aren't bigots like to call it, same-sex marriage) is most certainly not "an attempt to exalt sodomy to the level of lawful intercourse." Sodomy was exalted to that level three years ago when the US Supreme Court ruled that laws banning sodomy were discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional. Same-sex marriage is about equality, plain and simple.

And lastly, Leland, I encourage you to look up "sodomy" in a dictionary. You seem to use the term as if it's interchangeable with "gay sex," but sodomy ain't just for gay guys anymore. You may have even enjoyed it yourself on occasion. And if not, give it a try. I bet you'll like it.

--Megan, Norfolk

Basic Instinct

My cat is quite possibly the friendliest cat in the world. She loves me best, but she also loves strangers. When someone knocks on my door, she runs to the door and sits there meowing until I let them in, at which point she rubs up against them and flops down at their feet waiting to be pet.

Today, however, she took one look at the air conditioning repair man and darted behind me, peeking at him around my legs. He began speaking and she bolted downstairs where, minutes later, I found her cowering under the bed. And she's a cat, so it didn't even mean anything to her that what Mr. A/C had said, while leering at me, was, "So. . .are you all alone here?". She just has an instinctive fear of creepy guys.

Imagine if we all came equipped with that feature. And imagine if we could deal with creepy guys just by hiding under the bed until they went away.

For the Record, I Don't Stand With Israel

I don't stand with Hezbollah either, but I don't stand with any state whose idea of self-defense involves dropping bombs on civilians to the tune of 200 or so casualties (and counting).

Our cowboy of a current president thinks that "what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over." Of course, if they got the US to get Israel to stop doing this shit

photo credit

photo credit

that would probably help.

DOH!

There are some really pretty clouds outside right now that I'd like to take a picture of. Unfortunately, I dropped my digital camera on the floor the other day and broke it. This would be the digital camera my parents gave me for Christmas after I, um, dropped my previous digital camera (which they'd given me for Christmas) on the floor and broke it.

This raises an important question: if I tell my mom, will she be mad or will she buy me a new camera?

It's a Canon PowerShot A520, Mom, but I wouldn't be opposed to an upgrade. Oh, and see if they make a bubblewrap version.

How The Virginia Senate Race Is Shaping Up

A headline in today's Virginian Pilot reads, "Allen enjoys 16-1 cash advantage over Webb," which is pretty much all you need to know to figure out who's gonna win this one. The article mentions that Larry Sabato of UVA's Center for Politics thinks that "if national Democrats and party activists in the internet blogosphere don't pour large sums into his campaign quickly, 'this race is going to be over.'"

I don't know that I'd call myself a party activist, but I am out here in the internet blogosphere (as opposed to the other blogosphere?), so I encourage everyone to click here and pour large sums of money into Webb's campaign. Quickly. Otherwise this race will be over. Then go here and vote for PAC for a Change to throw its support and its money behind Webb (avoid the temptation to vote for Bob Casey instead!).

I'm not crazy about Webb, but he's a hell of a lot better than Allen, who's a dyed-in-the wool, George W. Bush Republican. So please, give Webb your money. Even if you're not a Virginian, you should still care about this race. Allen's making laws -- and they're crazy-ass laws -- for you too. Plus, he speaks only in football analogies. It's infuriating.

Of course, if Allen loses, he might pursue that bid for the presidency he's always kicking around, so it's kind of a double-edged sword here. Fuck and alas. Or maybe losing your Senate seat to a guy who once worked for Reagan but now calls himself a Democrat ends any hopes of ever becoming President. I don't know.

Vive La France, Wherein I Affectionately Fry Steve

My friend Steve, a fellow Social Studies teacher, throws an annual Bastille Day party. Technically, Steve and his wife Jen throw the party, but I'm pretty sure she's just in it for the beer. It's Steve who talks about Bastille Day all year long, and Steve who included pictures of Bastille Day parties past in the French Revolution powerpoint he shows his World History students.

You know you're at a teacher's party when:
A) the party is in celebration of Bastille Day, and the hosts aren't French;
B) the first thing you see upon arriving at the party is not the alcohol but a little table containing "Hello, my name is" stickers;
C) when it comes time to sing the French National Anthem, your host distributes self-made handouts that include the lyrics to said anthem, in both English and French, AND a little flowchart containing a brief history of the French Revolution.

Anyway, the party was lots of fun. I should know, what with having been the last to leave. It may also have been the only Bastille Day party in history at which guests could Vive la Resistance! by doing jello shots.

No Boys Allowed

Technically, boys ARE allowed, I just don't think they'll find much of interest here today. Also, boy or girl, if you're looking for something funny or political or both, check back next week. This one's serious. And long.

Yesterday I worked with Kate, a recent high school graduate who will be attending NYU in the Fall. She was telling me about how she got a Facebook and has already started meeting other people who'll be attending NYU. "Wait, what's a Facebook?," I interrupted. She tried to explain it to me. "Oh, so it's like a MySpace?" "Sort of, but for colleges," she said and kept explaining. "OH, so it's like a Friendster?" "What's a Friendster?," Kate asked.

Kids these days.

So Kate got online and went to Friendster, which didn't help much since we couldn't see any Friendsters. I never got into Friendster, nor did anyone else I've ever known except my ex-fiancé and his group of friends(ters).

I typed in the ex's name for Kate. His Friendster profile came up. Kate looked at it and said, "Yeah, that's pretty much like Facebook." (why she couldn't have just shown me her Facebook and saved us all that trouble is beyond me) Then Kate asked, "Your ex-fiancé has a friend named Osama bin Megan?" and the next thing I knew we were looking at this.

For those who don't feel like clicking on it, in a nutshell, it's a fake profile of me that my ex-fiancé created. And it's not nice.

I showed it to my friend Meaghan this morning. She read it, saying "oh my god" every few seconds and glancing at me to see if I was okay (I was). "He called you a shrew," she said, amazed. "And a bitch," she continued, shaking her head. "Don't forget harpy," I added. "Wow," said Meaghan finally, "I'm surprised."

The funny thing is, as I explained to Meaghan, I'm not surprised by it. Hurt, yes (even two years after the fact). Surprised, no. Meaghan was surprised that I wasn't surprised. "It's typical," I sighed, "I would never have said it then, but on some level I knew my fiancé was emotionally abusive." Meaghan sighed too. "God, I hear ya, girl," she replied.

Meaghan and I worked together almost every day the summer before I was supposed to get married. Simply by virtue of spending so much time with me, Meaghan was probably the only person as clued-in to my emotional state that summer as my guardian angel Dave (although I never sat in her living room and contemplated taking my engagement ring off and throwing it across the room, as I once did in Dave's). Shortly after I called off my wedding, Meaghan initiated a separation from her husband, who she described today as "a drunken bastard." We talked about our similar experiences, and what I think is a fairly common experience among women, maybe men too.

"It scares me sometimes what we put up with in relationships and never even mention to our friends."

"We don't mention it because we know deep down we shouldn't be putting up with it."

"And maybe we're afraid our friends will tell us something we're not ready to hear yet. "

"Emotional abuse isn't physical abuse, but GOD it sucks."

"I remember feeling frantic when he'd get like that. Not frantic for my safety, but frantic about placating him so that he would stop screaming and saying horrible things."

"I remember cringing, mentally curling up into a little ball, and thinking 'if I don't say anything or do anything or even look at him, he'll stop. He'll have to.'"

"Why didn't we talk about that? We were going through basically the same thing at basically the same time and we never said a word."

"What could we have said to each other that would have made us get out?"

"How does this happen? I mean, we're two fairly intelligent, independent women who don't need a man around to make us happy. What the hell?"

Meaghan and I couldn't come up with an answer to that question (plus we were supposed to be working), but we did agree it wasn't a question unique to us. In fact, I know exactly zero women who are stupid, and I know very few women to whom that question does not apply.

So what gives, girls?

Oh, and PS to the ex: If you're gonna base half the mean stuff you say about me on a made-up love for Little House on the Prairie, at least have my picture be of Laura Ingalls Wilder. You'll still look pathetic, but not as pathetic as a guy who bitched endlessly about Laura Ingalls Wilder and then posted a picture of Holly Hobbie. Laura Ingalls Wilder certainly never carried a parasol. She was a pioneer, for the love of god. On, you know, the prairie.

Are You Fucking Kidding Me?!

I teach an AP class, for which my students take an AP exam. I told them when they took the exam that they'd get their scores back sometime over the summer. That sometime was apparently today, judging by the number of emails, voicemails, and text messages I got today from kids about their AP scores.

How do my students have my cell phone number, you might be wondering? One of my favorite students, who we'll call Georgia because that's her name, offered to fix something on my cell phone for me. Thinking how nice of her that was, I stupidly agreed. Georgia did fix the something on my cell phone, but she also called her own cell phone from it, thus giving her my number. She promised not to give it out, and even reported deleting it from some of her friends' phones after they stole it from her. But I guess peer pressure has prevailed.

By the way, if you think this knocks Georgia off my list of favorites, you are totally mistaken. I think Georgia could murder someone and I'd still love her.

Anyway, I just retrieved a voicemail from one of my least favorite students, which said

Uh, hey Miss [my last name], this is [least favorite student], I just wanna let you know that I got a 1 on that thing [the AP exam], so uh, thanks for all the great teaching this year. You can call me back if you want, I'll prolly call you later.

You know what, buddy? There was great teaching this year. You were just ordering pizza during it. It probably didn't help that you did a grand total of ten homework assignments over the course of the year, or that you copied your classwork assignments from one of your buddies when you bothered to turn them in at all. Remember how you spent every single class goofing off and then failed almost every test? (And, sidebar, remember how the entire administrative staff had to have a chat about sexual harrassment with you after you wrote "you are my dream woman" and "I'm your daddy" on the papers you'd turned in to me? How do you think they would react to your CALLING me?) You are not exactly a stellar student, which is why, minutes before the AP exam, I took your bet (for an A for the year!) that you'd get above a 2.

So far, this student is the only one I know of who scored a 1. You get a 1 for writing your name on the paper, by the way. I've gotten lots of news of 3s and 4s today, even a few 5s (the highest possible). But you know what? It's the 1 I'll focus on. Instead of sleeping tonight, I'll lie awake thinking about what I could have done to reach this kid, to interest him in the subject, to make things meaningful enough that he would have done his work, to give him some sort of sense of accomplishment, no matter how small. I'll beat myself up for betting him he could score above failing rather than believing in him and encouraging him to do his best. And I don't even like this kid. But it's what teachers do.

And why we get paid so much.

Attention Bookstore Customers

When I ask you if you want a bag for that, you're supposed to say no. You're supposed to pause for a moment and ponder the small ways in which we're all destroying the planet. I'm only asking if you want a bag because I've already determined you don't need one. If you did, I would just place your purchase in a bag without asking.

I mean, when you reach into a purse the size of a small country to pay for your one postcard, it seems you would also notice that there's plenty of room for the new postcard in there. Imagine how silly you look walking around carrying a gigantic purse while holding a bag full of one postcard.

Likewise, if you're only buying one book, you don't need a bag. You can just carry the book around. You'll look cool, hip, literary. People will think you're smart. Unless, of course, you just bought a Nicholas Sparks book. In which case I would've given you a bag, no questions asked.

And while we're on the subject, if you're buying a book for each of your twelve children, all of whom want their own bag, it's time to have those big talks about sharing and karma. You get one bag. Your kids can take turns holding it or -- better idea -- go bagless. Let each kid carry his/her book, and explain to them how environmentally unconscionable it is to place each item you purchase in a separate plastic bag. That will also afford you a perfect opportunity to talk to them about peak oil and to start planning your vegetable garden.

A Sign Of Things To Come

A very nice old man came into the bookstore today and asked me to help him pick out books for his two-year-old twin grandsons. One of the boys, he said, likes Thomas the Train books and the other enjoys the Pottery Barn catalog. "It's the pictures or something I guess," said Gramps, slightly bemused but otherwise not too terribly concerned.

We settled on a Bob the Builder book for the Thomas the Train twin (branching out a bit) and Hop on Pop for the Pottery Barn kid. Because, really, what the hell do you do with a two year old boy who likes to read the Pottery Barn catalog? If I'd had it handy, I would have offered him my Ikea catalog -- a bit of a step down from Pottery Barn, sure, but a lot hipper and way more ethical. And all the while, Gramps was chuckling and describing to me how the twins couldn't possibly be more different. No shit, Gramps. You had me at Pottery Barn catalog.

After we got the twins taken care of, Gramps asked me, "Do you have anything on the French and Indian War?" and explained that he was a reenactor. "Of the French and Indian War?!," I blurted out, "I didn't know anyone reenacted that one." "Yeah, the Civil War guys get all the glory," he replied sadly.

Amazingly, we did have something on the French and Indian War, two somethings in fact, right there on the Revolutionary War shelf of our Military History section. (The history buff in me often thinks about overhauling our extensive History section, organizing it chronologically by war and alphabetically by author, but other history buffs always seem to find stuff I didn't even know we had, so I figure something must be working for us.) While I hunted for French and Indian War books, I learned a lot about said war from Gramps. Mostly that it's a shame the way History teachers just gloss over the poor French and Indian War.

Since I'd developed sort of a soft spot for Gramps by this point (how can you not heart a guy who reenacts the freakin' French and Indian War and has not yet realized his two-year-old grandson is gay?), I didn't mention that I am one of those glossy History teachers.

Here's the extent of my coverage of the French and Indian War in 11th grade US History classes: "So, it's called the French and Indian War not because it was fought between the French and the Indians, but because the English fought it (on behalf of the American colonists) against the French and the Indians. Over beaver hats." Then I go into a bit about historiography, which nobody finds interesting but me, and I end with a brief reminder that waging war is not cheap. This leads me to the question, "So let's say you're England and you just fought this long-ass, expensive-ass war to protect your colonists in the New World. How are you gonna get that money back?" "Uh, tax the colonists?," someone inevitably guesses.

And there you go, we're on to the Revolution and considerably more fun. There's no beaver hats, but at one point all these pissed off Bostonians dress up like Indians and turn the Boston Harbor into a nice cuppa tea. What's not fun about that?

A Bonus BONUS Post For Patrick*

I'm not sure which my dad likes more, garbage night or the subsequent garbage day. For as long as I can remember, the man has been obsessed with what he calls garbage night, the night before the trash is picked up. Even as a child I can remember him hurrying around, emptying the small trash cans in all the bathrooms or opening the refrigerator, shaking nearly empty bottles and saying things like, "It's garbage night. Who wants to finish this ketchup?"

This has always struck me as odd because, you know, they'll be back to pick up the trash again next week. Couldn't the ketchup bottle wait until then?

I once asked my dad some variation of this very question. He seemed genuinely amazed that I didn't get it and explained, very seriously, that he didn't want the garbage men to be disappointed when they came to pick up our garbage. Other neighbors might fill their trash cans only halfway or three-quarters full, but my dad would be damned if he was going to treat our garbage men that way. As if tossing less than a full can of trash into the truck would be disappointing to those who actually have to lift the suckers.

Same deal with recycling, only considering some of the things stored in recyclables, this finishing things thing of my dad's can get interesting. I distinctly recall the Labor Day weekend of my 16th year, when my dad and I were charged with closing up the beach house at the end of the summer. In addition to all the cleaning and packing and ketchup-finishing, my dad also took it upon himself to finish every open bottle of liquor in the house, which was no small feat. Although he had to sleep on the floor that night to minimize the spins and probably found his throbbing head the next morning fairly disappointing, you can bet your ass the recycling men were not disappointed by a meager recycling take.

I mention all this because I received an email from my dad today with the subject line "garbage nites." After nearly ten years of living on my own, during which I have almost always remembered to put out the garbage on garbage night, I thought to myself, "Jesus Christ. Please tell me he is not emailing me to remind me when garbage night is." He wasn't. He was emailing me to tell me he'd noticed a lot of scrap wood lying around outside on his last visit to the beach and he thought it would be a great idea for me to "please take a few pieces of the scrap wood that is on the ground behind the house and put it in both of the garbage cans every garbage day so we can slowly get rid of it all."

It is obviously killing my dad that A) there is something lying around that he could be systematically getting rid of, B) he has two perfectly good garbage cans just languishing here in their relative emptiness, and C) his daughter is totally wasting the garbage men's time with her triflin' one trash bag a week.

What he doesn't know is that the recycling men are almost always thrilled with my weekly offering.

*Patrick, by the way, is my favorite student I never taught. He will be a junior at Colby next year. As a freshman he was named Colby's Most Wonderful and Awesome New Student, or something like that. Patrick is indeed both wonderful and awesome.

Things I've Recently Said To The Newspaper

I tend to talk to the newspaper while I'm reading it. Mostly I say things like, "Are you fucking kidding me?!" and "Oh my fucking god" and "Jesus fucking Christ" and "what a fucking idiot" and "fucking Israel." Occasionally though, I say something first that actually relates specifically to what I'm reading.

Like this morning, when I noticed these headlines about how Operation Enduring Freedom is going: "Baghdad street violence leaves at least 60 dead" and "Five more soldiers charged in rape, killings" and "Documents detail widespread corruption in Iraq police force." I said to the newspaper, "I guess this is what Bush meant when he stood under that 'mission accomplished' banner three fucking years ago in his cute little flight suit, or what Cheney meant a few weeks ago when he said that we're making 'significant progress' in Iraq. Jesus fucking Christ."

Or yesterday, as I read a story about the Senate race in Virginia in which George Allen, the incumbent, supports a constitutional amendment banning flag desecration and the challenger, Jim Webb (aka Anybody but Allen), doesn't. The article quoted one Raymond Walker, who (according to the Virginian Pilot) "said he likes Allen's views on the flag. 'Some of those people who are burning the flag ought to get in a submarine and have two depth charges dropped on them,' said Walker, a retired 23-year Navy man. 'That'll change their minds.'" To Mr. Walker I said, "Go ahead buddy, why don't you round up the handful of people who have ever burned a flag in protest (four this year and three last year, for example) and take them down in a sub and drop two depth charges on them. I'm sure that will totally change their minds about freedom of speech. You fucking idiot."

Or also yesterday, as I read a recipe in the "Gracious Living" section (only in the South will you find sections of the newspaper entitled "Gracious Living") for fried corn cakes. "Oooooh, that sounds good," I said, and then -- and I am not fucking kidding you here -- I cut the recipe out.

Why Working In A Bookstore Is Not Very Lucrative For Me

Week of 07.03.06 - 07.09.06

Books Bought or Ordered

The Electric Michaelangelo by Sarah Hall
The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell
The Brothers K by David James Duncan
River Teeth by David James Duncan
How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman
The Rug Merchant by Meg Mullins
Candide by Voltaire

Books Read

The Electric Michaelangelo by Sarah Hall
Citizenship Papers by Wendell Berry (abandoned)
The Rug Merchant by Meg Mullins

PS: Nick Hornby writes a monthly column, entitled "Stuff I've Been Reading", for The Believer magazine which always begins with a list of books bought and books read. So I kinda stole that from him. He actually tells you stuff about the books though.

Summer Blogging: Relocation and New Rules

Relocation: Although my profile says I live in Norfolk, VA (which I do), I spend my summers in Corolla, a resort beach town on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I'm a teacher, remember, so I have my summers "off." (By the way, teachers have their summers off the same way everybody else has their weekends off: we don't work and we don't get paid.) So anyway, my parents built a beach house in Corolla about 20 years ago, and I've lived there every summer since. It's like having an entirely different life for two months out of the year. I wake up whenever I want to, sit on the beach all day, and drink fairly good wine every night. Oh, and occasionally I work, but only two or three days a week, and even then it's at a bookstore so it hardly counts as work.

I mention this relocation because I imagine some of my posts throughout the rest of the summer will involve bitching about tourons (tourists + morons = tourons) and I don't want anyone to be confused.

Also, in your head you are probably pronouncing "Corolla" like you would the car. You're going to have to stop that immediately. "Corolla" is pronounced "Cuh'RAWL'uh."

New Rules: No more blogging on Fridays. It's just not gonna happen. On Fridays I'm either working or preparing for weekend guests or getting drunk earlier than usual or some combination of the three. Also, no blogging on Sundays. I'm gonna try this thing where I don't even turn on the computer on Sundays. Just to see what that's like.

So there you go. Happy summer.

Okay, I Get It!

My cat does not like to be picked up. She just doesn't. She's all kinds of affectionate otherwise. She runs to greet you when she hears the front door open, rubbing up against your legs and purring and rolling over so that you can pet her tummy. And if you enter with your hands full, say of groceries, and you cannot give her the bellyrubs she requires, she'll run in front of you and roll over until you have fulfilled your tummy-petting duty. But don't scoop her up. She fucking hates that.

I'm usually pretty good about respecting her kitty indendence because, you know, I like it when people respect my Megan independence. I try not to scoop her unless I'm weighing her fat kitty ass to see if the kitty diet's paying off.

Today, though, something went awry. Something spooked her and she scratched the shit out of me, in three places, trying to get away. And it fucking hurt. So you know what? No more scooping. We'll both be better off that way. I mean, I'll be a little lonely, but Luna will be in hog heaven.

Typha latifolia, Te Amo

When I was a kid, I had a serious thing for cattails. Every day after school I went over to this marshy field (which is now a soul-sucking McNeighborhood with a wicked bad mosquito problem) to pick cattails and bring them home to my treehouse. I recognize now that this was ecologically irresponsible ("take only memories, leave only footprints," etc.), but at the time I found it pretty enjoyable. Enjoyable enough that I kept doing it even though it constantly got me in trouble. Because, as I recall, I had some sort of elaborate cattail project in the works that involved shredding the cattails and hoarding the resulting cattail-down in my treehouse.

I think I was probably planning to make pillows. As a kid, I was all about making pillows out of shit you shouldn't make pillows out of. My mom once caught me stashing a shopping bag full of dog hair under the grill after I'd brushed the dog. "What the hell are you doing?," she asked. "I'm saving this dog hair until I have enough to make a pillow," I responded, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. "No. No, you are not. That's disgusting, and it will make you allergic to dogs," announced my mom, snatching my dog hair from me and throwing it in the trash. Her argument didn't make much sense to me: a pillow made of hair from the dog that slept on my bed every night was going to make me allergic to dogs? Really?

But I digress. Back to the cattail story.

When you shred cattails, they become downy, like very dense dandelion fluff. Perfect for pillow-making. But also perfect for getting blown out of the treehouse around the yard and stuck to everything. "Goddamnit, Megan!," my Navy dad would yell, "no more cattails!," as he climbed clumsily (sometimes in uniform) up into the treehouse he'd built to confiscate my cattails while I looked on sadly.

Poor cattails.

And poor Dad. "It's just nature, Dad," I'd admonish while he'd secretly wonder how this little nature girl, who'd begged him to build her a house in a tree so she could get away from it all, came to be his daughter.

Crap! I digressed again!

Okay, so, cattails. . .cattail down. . .messy yard. . .yelling.

Despite the yelling, I loved my cattails. I kept bringing them home and I kept getting in trouble. Eventually I stoppped with the cattails, either because I had moved on to dog hair or because my marsh was getting plowed over for a new development.

I haven't really thought about cattails in a long time. Until today, when I was out and about with my mom and we stopped at a place that had cattails growing along the side of the road. "Ooooh, cattails!," I exclaimed. "Mmmhmmm," my mom replied skeptically. I think she was hoping I wouldn't take them home to make a pillow. "I'm gonna take a picture," I added excitedly. "Jesus Christ," she said, shaking her head and rolling her eyes and no doubt recalling my former affinity for cattails.

Oh, and I tried to take a picture of a nearby chicken too, but it ran away from me like, well, like a chicken.

That Crazy Axis Of Evil Is At It Again

Okay, I don't get it. I know I'm supposed to get it, but I don't. And so I must ask. . .how come we're allowed to have nuclear weapons but North Korea (or Iran) isn't? And why, after BushCo defied the international community with its preemptive war on Iraq, do those bastards think they have any credibility when they bitch about North Korea's Fourth of July fireworks display and how "this just shows the defiance of the international community by North Korea"?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all a fan of nuclear weapons. I'd prefer that nobody had them. But I don't think you get to run around calling other countries evil and whining (or, you know, dropping bombs) when they try to develop the same weapons of mass destruction you've been stockpiling for half a century.

That's just me though, and I know there's a lot of complexity and nuance to this whole president thing, so I may be missing something.

Public Service Announcement

A sheriff's deputy just drove through here waving to everyone as he passed and repeatedly playing this announcement over a loudspeaker:

May I have your attention please? This announcement is a courtesy of the Currituck County Sheriff's Department. Fireworks are illegal if they explode or leave the ground. Violators will be prosecuted. Thank you for your cooperation.

A necessary reminder, given the propensity of drunken tourists to set off fireworks in the driveways of the houses they've rented for the week, and the propensity of said fireworks to accidentally set things on fire. A necessary reminder, and a much nicer one than my brother's annual 4th of July announcement to the neighbors, delivered angrily and loudly from the upper deck with Budweiser in hand:

Fireworks are illegal, assholes!

Happy Independence Day

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. "

--Thomas Jefferson

Pick Your Poison

As I emerged from a beautiful, bathwater-like Atlantic Ocean late in the afternoon on Saturday, I glanced up the beach to see my mom walking toward me carrying only her beach bag and a chair, no beach umbrella. Over the last five years, my mom has had various bits of herself scraped away as skin cancer creeps slowly over her body. After decades upon decades of sun-worshipping, she has been warned by doctors that any further exposure to UV rays will only add to the sun's damage. Her beachgoing children go to great lengths to ensure that she is appropriately sunscreened, umbrellaed, and floppy hatted. So, when she sat down next to me on Saturday my immediate response was not a cheerful, "Hey Mom" but a scowling, "Where's your umbrella?"

"I've decided I'd rather die of skin cancer than Alzheimer's," my mom answered matter-of-factly, but in a tone that indicated she'd clearly given this a lot of thought. I thought about it for a few seconds myself before I said, "Fair enough" and I then allowed her to sun herself for the rest of the day, even helping her to time her flips for an even tan (30 minutes on the front, 30 minutes on the back).

Because, you know what, Alzheimer's is a bitch. Skin cancer's no picnic either, but given those two options for my mom (or, let's be honest here, for myself in 30 years or so) I'll take skin cancer all the way. Every single person on my maternal grandmother's side of the family has had Alzheimer's -- including my grandmother, who died a couple months ago no longer knowing who anyone was, and my grandmother's sister, who is like a second grandmother and who was escorted home by the police yesterday after going for a walk and being unable to find her way back.

I don't want this to happen to my mother. I can't bear the thought of reminding her who I am every time I see her. Or later, of reminding her who I am and realizing she cannot place me, that she has no recollection of ever having had a daughter named Megan. I do not look forward to agonizing over whether she can best be cared for by an institution or by myself and my siblings. It will break my heart to watch as she struggles to call up information she knows she should have and knows she used to have but that now eludes her. I do not wish to register my mom with the National Alzheimer's Association as I would a pet whose wandering off I fear, nor do I wish to live in very real fear of her wandering off.

So, if my mom wants to lie in the sun all summer long and tell me the same stories over and over again, I'm going to let her. At least she knows who I am, and at least she's wearing SPF 30.

Overheard At The Corolla Farm Market

Rather Rotund Northern Man: (perusing the pastry selection) Yeah, I'll take a banana cream pie.

Farm Market Employee: I'm sorry, sir, we don't have any banana cream pie.

Rotundo: Whaddaya mean you don't have any banana cream pie? All these pies and you're out of banana cream pie?

Employee: We're not out of banana cream pie, sir. We just don't have any. We just have fruit pies.

Rotundo: Banana's a fruit.

Employee: Sir, we have peach pie, apple pie, rhubarb pie, blueberry pie, and a mixed fruit pie.

Rotundo: Well I'm looking for a banana cream pie!

Mrs. Rotundo: How about a peach pie, honey? You like peaches.

Rotundo: (to his wife) I don't want a peach pie. I want a banana cream pie! (to the employee) Listen, you better tell whoever owns this place that there's a lot of city people that come down here and we want our BANANA CREAM PIE. You're gonna lose a lot of business if you don't have banana cream pie!

Employee: (suppressing a giggle along with the urge to punch him) I'll be sure to mention that, sir.

Rotundo: (to his wife as they walk away pie-less) What the hell kinda place doesn't have banana cream pie?

And so it goes until Labor Day. Which is really too bad for the Rotundos because that mixed fruit pie is fucking awesome.

Ten Songs I Will Play Over And Over And Over Again If Nobody's Around To Stop Me

1. "Abandoned Love" by Bob Dylan
2. "Angel" by Bob Dylan
3. "Boots of Spanish Leather" by Nanci Griffith (a Dylan cover)
4. "Brokedown Palace" by the Grateful Dead
5. "If You Knew" by Jeff Buckley (a Nina Simone cover)
6. "Redwood Tree" by Van Morrison
7. "Sweet Lorraine" by Patty Griffin
8. "Wagon Wheel" by Old Crow Medicine Show (a Dylan cover)
9. "Warmth of the Sand" by Dashboard Confessional
10. "Yellow Ledbetter" by Pearl Jam
    

For a girl who professes to be madly in love with Van Morrison, you'd think there'd be a bit more VanMo and a bit less Dylan on the list, wouldn't you?

Perhaps Her Thumb Is A Bit Too Green

My mom is an avid gardener, and her garden kicks ass.

(www.annetaintor.com)

In the warmer months (i.e., March-November), she can usually be found doing one of the following:

• planting plants
• watering plants
• digging up plants and replanting them elsewhere
• pruning, dead-heading, or otherwise tending to plants
• weeding around plants
• shopping for plants
• reading about plants in one of her many plant/gardening encyclopedias
• talking to plants.

She takes this gardening thing seriously, and she's really good at it -- I think because she truly loves plants and thinks of them almost like children.

My brother did a post yesterday about how he found a plant in my mom's garden and thought, just for a second, that she might be growing pot. She wasn't, but that reminded us of our favorite mom gardening story.

A few summers ago, my brother removed some seeds from an otherwise empty cigarette box in the freezer and planted them in this thicket behind our beach house. Only one of the seeds actually sprouted, and it grew into a scraggly little excuse for a plant. My brother was understandably concerned for the welfare of his wee plant and frequently asked me for advice on how to make it flourish. Having once dated a boy who'd secretly converted the back corner of his mother's basement into a small-scale hydroponic marijuana farm, I was no stranger to illicit gardening, but his operation was entirely different from my brother's and I couldn't help. The plant continued to struggle, and the situation grew dire. (It probably didn't help that my brother kept pinching off bits of the plant for his own recreational use, but whatever.)

One evening after we'd returned from the beach, my brother was hosing off the dog while my mom stood nearby lecturing me on my poor care of my drooping tomato plants. My brother listened attentively and then said, "Hey Mom, come here and tell me what's wrong with this plant," grabbing her hand and tromping off with her into the bushes as my jaw dropped. When they emerged a minute later, my mom looked pissed.

"Jesus, Brian, that plant needs fertilizer!," she declared indignantly. "And it's not getting nearly enough light. Go get the pruners* and trim some of those branches back there!," she commanded, waving in the general direction of the bushes as I looked on in amazement. "Mom," I said, "do you know what that plant is?" "Well I'm assuming it's marijuana, Megan," she answered huffily, "but that's no way to treat a plant."

She then marched off to direct the chopping of limbs, and carefully tended to the plant for the rest of the summer.

*The tool my mom instructed my brother to get is actually called loppers, but she told me no one would know what I was talking about unless I called them pruners.

David Payne, A Better Man Than I

A few months ago, I did a post (entitled "I'm Falling out of Love") about how I'd read a new book by one of my favorite authors and hated it. I wrote really really mean things about the book, so mean that I'm not even linking to the post, and wondered "What if stupid Wando Passo has ruined David Payne for me forever? What if I've fallen out of love?" I clicked "Publish Post" and thought no more of David Payne.

Until my friend Meaghan, who I work with at a bookstore during the summers and who had scheduled David Payne for a book signing, forwarded me an email he'd sent to her that said (I'm paraphrasing here) "Are you the Megan of the By & By blog? If so, we should probably cancel the event. PS I'm sorry you didn't like the book." (David Payne probably doesn't say 'PS,' but I do.) Poor Meaghan straightened things out with Mr. Payne, but she did have to admit that the Megan of the By & By blog was one of her seasonal employees (since I had mentioned both her and her bookstore in the post) and apologize for my being such a shrieking hateful harpy.

Although I would have liked Mr. Payne to sign my tattered copies of his four other books, I thought it best not to attend the signing event a few weeks ago. Meaghan said it had gone well, and that, I thought, was that. Not so.

When I reported for my first day of work this morning a smiling Meaghan held out a copy of Back to Wando Passo and said, "David Payne left you a present." Confused and contrite, I said, "But I already have a copy. . .and I didn't even like it." "Look inside," she responded, almost giggling. So I looked inside, where I found this inscription:

To Megan --

Anything we can do to rekindle the spark?

David Payne

And that is what saved David Payne for me.

In Response To A Letter To The Editor, Vol. II

From The Virginian Pilot, Tuesday 06.27.06

To the Editor:

I have read a couple of letters to the editor recently from people who complain. I only have one thing I am tired of, and that is complaining. Don't people have enough in their lives to fulfill them? Life is too short to live it in negativity.

Webster's dictionary defines democracy as government by the people, especially the rule of the majority.

A rule by the majority means just that. The majority in the United States have voted and their votes determine the rules. A few people believe their opinions should outweigh the majority.

If you want to change the way things are done, do it through your congressmen. Write letters to those who make the decisions.

Make your voice heard through the proper channels rather than complaining and trying to impose your opinions on the majority. Go to the polls and vote for people who you believe will see your side.

--Shirley, Virginia Beach

To Shirley:

I've failed a grand total of nine students in my seven years of teaching, but you would not have passed my 12th-grade Government course with your rudimentary understanding of representative democracy and how it actually works in America. When faced with this freebie of a final exam question

In the context of American democracy, explain what Larry Flynt meant when he said, "Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper."

you would have been unable to discuss our Founding Fathers' fears of a tyranny of the majority or the safeguards they built into the Constitution to prevent such tyranny from arising.

As for effecting change in our current political system by writing letters to our elected representatives or by voting for people who will actually represent our views, gimmee a fuckin' break, Pollyanna. It costs a lot of money to get elected to public office, and our office-holders are responsive to the interests of their donors, not their constituents. I hate to complain, but whenever I write a letter to either of my senators, I get a polite response thanking me for my input and explaining why I am wrong. So much for representative democracy.

Dissent -- or as you call it, complaining -- is the foundation of any healthy democratic system, as the citizens in a democracy share a responsibility for keeping their government in line. The fact that most Americans see democracy as nothing more than voting and occasional letter-writing is precisely what is wrong with American democracy.

But don't take my word for it. Thomas Jefferson, who we haven't heard from in a while, liked "to see the people awake and alert" and wrote that "the spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive." He, like many modern-day complainers, maintained that "dissent is the highest form of patriotism"

Which more or less translates to, "Bite me, Shirley."

--Megan, Norfolk

Bring It!

Today I went to the mall, where I managed not to A) be accosted by panhandlers or B) buy anything. I did, however, see this oddity in the parking garage:

truck reads:
TEAM BRING IT

Finally The Rock Comes Back To Virginia Beach

YOU SICK FREAK (x2)

Layin the Smacketh Downeth

Then I went to Target, where I didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but where I did buy some sweet camouflage gauchos. Thus far, I have not gotten into the camo trend or the gaucho trend, but there they were --$9.99 -- and I thought "why not kill two birds with one stone." As a result of these magnificant pants, I now heart both camouflage and gauchos. You'd have to be a pretty sick freak not to.

It's The New Counting Sheep

If you, like me, are prone to both insomnia and obsessive thoughts (coupled, of course, with compulsive behaviors), it is not a good idea to search the National Sex Offender Public Registry for nearby sex offenders just before going to bed. Because you will find them. 73 of them, in fact. And then you will lie awake for most of the night thinking about the bad things they did and wondering whether the doors were really locked the last time you got up to make sure the doors were still locked.

Oops

I just read my horoscope for the day, which said:

"You're usually even-steven. (yes) Today, there's a temptation to inappropriately vent stress and mistakenly call it 'passion' when it should be called 'temper tantrum.' (huh? I've been on vacation for over a week, so I'm pretty not-stressed. Plus I'm not really the temper tantrum type) You can avoid frustration through exercise." (uh-oh)

I totally fucked that one up. I woke up at 1:26 pm and languished in bed for another half an hour (it was raining, which for some reason always frees me of any obligation to be productive. Plus I'd already slept till 1:30 in the afternoon!). Then I spent pretty much the rest of the day lying on the couch reading. The closest I came to exercising was walking down a flight of stairs to take the trash out. I felt exactly zero temptation to throw a temper tantrum.

Shows how much you know, Holiday Mathis (the horoscope lady).

Attention Sketchy 50-Year-Old Men Of Norfolk

I'm flattered by the attention, I really am, but it's getting weird. I mean, I'm thirty. And I look like I'm twenty. I routinely get carded not just for alcohol but also for cigarettes (in a state where the smoking age is 18). Last month a clueless colleague even asked me for my hall pass.

I'm sure you're all very nice people, but what in the world makes you think that a 20-year-old girl -- or even a 30-year-old girl -- would want to go out with you? You're old.

If you drove a fancy car and seemed to have all sorts of money, you could probably find some younger women who would date you for that alone, but I'm not really the sugar daddy type, and most of you seem to be more sketchy than wealthy. Some of you, judging by the diamond-encrusted bits of gaudiness on your left hands, are even married, and I'm so not a home-wrecking kind a girl.

I know you think it's sweet and chivalrous to approach complete stangers and offer to demonstrate your culinary prowess by cooking them dinner or to bestow upon them the handful of seashells you've collected while casually strolling back and forth in front of them, but it's not. It's creepy.

Please stop. Just admire me from afar.* Or better yet, find a nearby non-sketchy man in his 30s and enourage him to hit on me. That would be a refreshing change of pace.

*For those who don't know me personally, rest assured that the "just admire me from afar" bit was a joke. Those who do know me personally know that I would never actually say anything like that. And I'm not exactly beating off the paparazzi.

Misadventures In Grocery Shopping

The grocery situation at my house can only be described as dire. I can't remember the last time I bought groceries in anticipation of actually eating a meal in my own home. Over the last week I can recall at least five trips to various wine shops and only one trip to a grocery store -- to purchase a frozen pizza.

I actually really love to cook. If you click on my profile thingy (or "jank," in Norfolkian teenage parlance) you will find "cooking" listed as one of my interests. But I've been busy lately and haven't done much cooking. Or grocery shopping.

A quick inventory this morning made it clear that I could no longer avoid the grocery store. My fridge contained the following: 1 can of Whole Foods Brand All Natural Ginger Ale (for mixing with bourbon), 12 bottles of Hoegaarden, half an orange's worth of orange wedges (for dropping into the Hoegaarden), 1 free range organic egg, and an almost empty jar of pasta sauce. The pantry is just as bare. This morning I actually stirred brown sugar into my tea, as I've been out of regular sugar for weeks.

It's not that I can't afford to buy groceries. I just don't feel like it.

So I lay around all day knowing that I had to go to the grocery store but never quite getting the urge to do so. Around 8 pm I finally set down my book and dragged myself off the couch to do the dreaded grocery shopping. There are two grocery stores within walking distance of my house, and I debated which one to go to. Gene Walters is slightly closer, it's generally cheaper, and it has a great wine selection (not that I needed wine). However, its produce and seafood departments suck, and some of its employees are a bit dodgy. Harris Teeter is a few blocks farther and a few cents more expensive, but they offer free cookies to kids of all ages. Also, their organic milk is significantly cheaper than the organic milk at Gene Walters -- economies of scale or some shit. Since milk was on my list, I opted for Harris Teeter.

What I didn't count on was finding my ex's car (SUV, actually) parked outside Harris Teeter and having to back-track to Gene Walters to avoid him. Seriously, I spend the whole day (while he's presumably at work) not grocery shopping, and when I finally decide to go to the store, that store, he's also grocery shopping there? Does god hate me or something?

Yes, I think perhaps god does hate me. Because a half gallon of organic milk at Gene Walters was a whopping $4.39, and I know at Harris Teeter it's only $3.19.

Thanks, Dave.

In Response To A Letter To The Editor, Vol. I

from The Virginian Pilot, Tuesday, 06.20.06

To The Editor:

It is summertime, so expect to be accosted by panhandlers in the parking lots of Norfolk shopping plazas. I find it curious that many of these unfortunates do not appear to be homeless as they're wearing freshly laundered clothes and are obviously well-fed.

While most are harmless, some attempt to raise funds through either fraud or intimidation. Pocket change or offers of food or employment will get you an insult, as only "paper money" will satisfy them.

When three panhandlers approach in a pincer movement, or a disheveled stanger attempts to prevent you from entering or exiting your vehicle, it is not considered attempted robbery -- it's "freedom of speech."

If the Norfolk City Council will not address this problem, it is only a matter of time before this situation will escalate.

--Clint, Norfolk

To Clint:

I am deeply sorry that you are uncomfortable being approached by poor people on your way into Nordstrom or headed back to the office after a $30 lunch at Kincaid's (I would be too). It is equally unfortunate that these poor people do not conform to your preconceived notions of poverty and homelessness. You're right: if people are going to ask if you can spare a dollar or two they should look a bit more dirty and gaunt. They certainly should not appear to have any self-respect, as that would make it more difficult for you dismiss them as second-class citizens.

As to these pesky streetpeople being well-fed, unless you have recently donated a shit-ton of wonderfulness to our local food bank, it is much more likely that they are subsisting on cheap fast food -- which we all know is fattening and unhealthy -- than that they have taken a brief break from gorging themselves to con you out of your spare change.

Jesus, whose message you conservatives so love to misrepresent, commanded us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves and flat out told us that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle (picture that!) than for a rich man to get into heaven. There's no ambiguity there. Give the panhandlers a dollar. It's not going to set you back that much. If you can't bring yourself to do that, maybe just stay away from shopping plazas for the rest of the summer. But good luck with that whole heaven thing.

And PS, you can't complain in paragraph one that panhandlers' clothes are too clean and then describe them as "disheveled" two paragraphs later. It makes it seem like you might be stupid or something.

--Megan, Norfolk

Welcome McHome

I've spent the last few days visiting my family in their suburban DC home while talking shit about the suburbs (my family does not find this endearing, by the way).

I lived in various suburbs of DC for seven years after graduating from college, but I finally moved to Norfolk because, after much consideration, I realized that I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it (Norfolk) had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

Okay, fine. Actually I moved to Norfolk because I hate the suburbs, I missed the ocean, and I wanted to teach someone other than rich privileged white kids.

Every time I go back to visit my DC-area friends and family, I'm sadly amazed to find another cookie-cutter development where trees used to be. I fear they're going to build McNeighborhoods until there's nothing left to McBuild on. Today I drove through one of these new developments after seeing a sign on the road advertising "luxury townhomes moderately priced from the $550s." I don't know about you, but I don't really consider $550,000 to be a "moderate" pricetag for much of anything. Plus, look at this place:




If I'm gonna drop half a million dollars on a dwelling, well, first of all I'm gonna need a sugar daddy. But. . .if I, with the help of my sugar daddy, am going to spend half a million dollars on a home, it will not be:

A) a townhouse
B) in the suburbs
C) situated next to a gas station
D) totally lacking in the tree department
E) identical to every other nearby dwelling
F) brand spankin' new
G) completely devoid of architectural character
H) a soul-sucking pit of despair.

Apparently a lot of McPeople are into that sort of thing, though, because the sign said there were only three McTownhomes left.

Fashion Sense

I'm always a bit dumbfounded when I read the care instructions inside a t-shirt and find the recommendation "warm iron as needed." I don't iron much. I don't really believe in it. My primary fashion consideration is comfort, which is not to say that I don't have some kick-ass clothes. I just don't own anything that requires tucking. . .or ironing, really. So anyway, whenever I see that bit about using a warm iron on my t-shirts, I laugh a little. Because who the hell irons their t-shirts?

My mother, that's who. The other day I walked into her laundry room and found her happily ironing her outfit for the day, which included a red Polo (also not part of my wardrobe) t-shirt that wasn't even wrinkled.

You think that's bad? I've caught the woman ironing sheets before.

Stuff Google Wants Me To Click On

Like most cool people, I have a GMail account. The weird thing about using GMail (over, say, Yahoo! Mail or HotMail or something) is that Google searches your emails and gives you a list of sponsored links alongside each email you open. It looks like this:



Most of the time, these links make sense. If you send an email about how much you love Jeff Buckley, you get a list of links to Jeff Buckley sites. But sometimes the lists make me wonder what the hell Google thinks I'm talking about. For example:

1. An email exchange that contained the statement "flirty sparring is a good characterization" elicited a link to Catch Him and Keep Him, which promised to reveal "10 mistakes you are probably making to scare away Mr. Right!" Presumably, flirty sparring is one of them.
2. When Steve sent me a link to a site about the Monkey Chant, Google gave me a bonus link to BetaMonkeyMusic.com, where I could find "insane drum loops" from Nikki Sixx. 'Cause, you know, Mötley Crüe is a lot like those Bali natives.
3. As I read a nice long email from Patrick, a former student, I noticed a list of eight links to sites having to do with paper shredding simply because he'd described his summer job: "Basically, I am the Office Anything Boy. It rocks! I get to run all sorts of errands and edit a ton of paperwork, and shred classified documents and read all sorts of stuff I shouldn't!! OK, the last task I only got once because I let it slip that I had read what I was supposed to be shredding. Hey, at least I didn't make copies."
4. An email from an excited Steve announcing that "C-SPAN now carries the Prime Minister's Questions on their website!" generated links to SpiritualHumanism.org and the Progressive Universal Life Church, both of which offer free instant ordination but have absolutely nothing to do with the British Prime Minister.
5. I was invited by BasisTech.com to "extract meaningful intelligence from unstructured mulitilingual text" after a series of emails wherein Josh and I made fun of each other for A) being snobby about words and B) having attended rival institutes of higher learning. Me: (pointing out that Josh had spelled clique wrong) "I mean, really. . .surely they offer a course in remedial spelling at THE University." Josh: "In the hip-hop vernacular I am sure it is spelled click. I am sure they teach contextual interpretation at Mr. Jefferson's Institute for the fairer gender." (This is what you call flirty sparring.)

If you are currently using some lame-ass email account that refuses to provide you with such random and amusing solicitations, let me know. The little email gods are constantly asking me if I want to invite people to GMail. I can totally put you on the list.

A Word To The Wise

If, amid a tropical downpour, you consult your pals and determine that the day is a much better day for curling up on the couch with a bottle of red wine than it is for working; if you then ditch work around 3:00, wading through two inches of rainwater to get to the wine store, and slog home with pals and wine in tow to drink for the next five hours; if you consume so much wine that you finally break out the Trivial Pursuit game you’ve been eyeing for hours and force your friends to play; and if, in response to the question, “which day of the week is named after a planet?” the sheer volume of alcohol coursing through your bloodstream causes you to triumphantly blurt out, “March!” when the answer is obviously Saturday, you are certainly going to pay for it the next morning.


I blame you, Alberto!

Small Things With Great Love

Mother Teresa told us that "we can do no great things, only small things with great love." This is a concept I've been thinking a lot about lately and a statement I've been repeating to myself like a mantra: small things with great love, small things with great love, small things with great love, small things with great love, small things with great love. It's what I focus on when I'm near the edge.

Because, you know, the world needs saving and I'm just a regular old person. In the last ten days alone I have been urged, via email, to:

• call for a Congressional debate on Iraq,
• save the Chesapeake Bay,
• sound the alarm on fake women's "clinics,"
• tell Fila to support the rights of workers in its factories,
• speak up for the oceans,
• save NPR and PBS,
• save internet freedom from AT&T,
• resolve the crisis: don't shut down the UN,
• stop global warming,
• stop the Arctic refuge drilling.

Obviously there's a lot of stuff that needs to be saved or stopped. And these are just the alerts from the organizations I've asked to hear from. Who knows what other calamities are befalling the world as I sit at home sipping my cabernet? It gets overwhelming.

This is where "small things with great love" comes in.

I can't end the war in Iraq, but I can call for that Congressional debate. I can't ensure equality for women the world over, but I can treat everyone I encounter fairly and equally while donating to Planned Parenthood. Acting alone, I can't save the Chesapeake Bay or the world's oceans, but I can pick up trash whenever I'm on the beach and refrain from pouring toxic chemicals down the storm drains. I can't guarantee that Fila or any other company pay its workers a living wage, but I can refuse to buy their products if they don't. I certainly can't single-handedly stop global warming, but I can do my part by walking to most places (unless there's a tropical storm blowing through like there was today) and by scowling at anyone with the audacity to drive a Hummer.

Lately I have found the "small things with great love" mantra most helpful at school. I am (in case you hadn't picked up on this) pretty passionate about what I do for a living. A big part of the reason I became a teacher is because I want to make the world a better place and because I want to inspire others to want to make the world a better place. I am an incredibly idealistic person, and there are occasions on which I actually begin the school day thinking, "This is it, this is the day I change the world. Because this is Lorax day, this is the day my kids find out that 'UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.'" But that's not the way things work. Lorax day doesn't change the world, but it's a small thing I do with great love.

So I keep reminding myself that, as a teacher, I "can do no great things, only small things with great love." Sometimes my kids inadvertently remind me of this too. It would be a great thing if I could completely eradicate racism and bigotry, but I can't. However, one of my students recently told me that, as a result of my class, “a lot of people became more accepting, or less willing to laugh at other cultures’ traditions or rituals" and cited as an example "the chant with those men."

The chant with those men is the Ramayana Monkey Chant, native to Bali, that my students watched in the film Baraka. When they first saw the monkey chant, they laughed and thought it was "weird". . . in a cultural-superiority kind of way. Then I made them watch it again (and, um, maybe again) and they ventured that it was "sorta cool." Over the course of the year, the monkey chant became cooler and cooler as my kids grew more and more tolerant. If we finished class a few minutes early, I could count on someone asking, "Hey, can we watch the monkey chant?" and the rest of the class responding, "Yeah! Monkey Chant!" Right before any test. . .monkey chant. Somebody's birthday. . .monkey chant. Minutes before their AP exam. . .monkey chant. Last day of school. . .monkey chant. One of my kids even downloaded the chant and set it as the background music on her MySpace page. Dude, the monkey chant ROCKS!

Here's the thing about the monkey chant: it's a small thing. It's certainly not a thing I ever anticipated being a vehicle of tolerance and acceptance. But here's the thing about great love: you can't underestimate it. Teacher who really really wants you to appreciate and respect other cultures + heartfelt cultural ritual that happens to be pretty cool + curious students = great love. It's powerful, that great love, no matter how small the thing.

And, for your enjoyment, the monkey chant:

DoubleSpeak

Warning: this is a rant.

After six years of teaching at a school I absolutely loved in a part of the state I absolutely didn't, I transferred to a part of the state I absolutely love to teach at a school I absolutely don't. The motto of my current school district is "all means all," a pedagogy to which I fully subscribe. It was my adherence to this philosophy that led me to choose my current district over the five or six others in the area. Unfortunately for me, but mostly for the students, "all means all" is a complete and utter crock of shit.

I have just returned from my school's graduation ceremony where the names of the honors graduates, who are predominantly white, were read before the names of the other graduates, who are (you guessed it) predominantly black.

Why stop there? I mean, we offer five different diplomas. Why not call the names of the kids who earned Advanced Studies diplomas first, followed by the names of the Standard diploma kids, then the Tech-Prep diploma kids, then the Vocational diploma kids, and lastly the Special-Ed diploma kids? Maybe at the end we could even give a little shout-out to all the kids who dropped out over the course of their high-school careers once they internalized the message that we just didn't give a fuck about them.

If all means all, you call everybody's name in alphabetical order. You don't segregate kids at their fucking graduation. If all means all you assign your best, most dynamic teachers to teach your weakest kids and let the worksheet queens "teach" the honors kids. If all means all you sure as fuck don't assign the most hated teacher (for good reason) in school to teach a course to students who have already failed it once (or possibly more). If all means all you come to work every day and do your damndest to reach all the kids -- even the kids who aren't yours, even the kids who seem unreachable. Hell, if all really means all you don't even have honors vs. regular classes in the first place.

Okay, that's all. End of rant. I'm going to go smoke a cigarette. Or five.

My Report Card

Because I truly value their feedback, I always ask my kids to fill out an anonymous course evaluation at the end of the year. I also always forget that kids who have spent all year asking, "how much is this worth?" before completing any assignment are not likely to devote much time to providing me with detailed constructive criticism if they're not being graded on how constructive that criticism is. Behold:

Q: Did you find this class interesting and/or intellectually challenging? Explain.
A: It was very challenging to my intellect, which is a rare thing since my intellect is hardly matched by much else.
A: It was not very interesting, but it was challenging because the topic of the class is retarded.

Q: What is the most important thing you learned in this class?
A: Super Size Me!
A: To behave.
A: I don’t know.
A: Patrick is incredibly creepy.
A: Don’t order pizza and have it delivered to class.

Q: If you were the teacher, what type of homework would you assign to help your students understand the textbook readings?
A: Instead of assigning homework at all. Just don’t assign it at all.
A: Not reading the long book, because it was boring and used the words non one (sic) knew.
A: Questions to go along with the unit (PS get a less boring book).

Q: What was the best thing about Human Geography class? Why?
A: The people they made the class so enjoyable. Window side represent!
A: Deforestation.
A: It was always funny.
A: Hanging out in class when you weren’t going crazy.
A: It was a chill environment it wasn’t like AHHHHHHHH all the time it was more like Wheew. . thank God I have AP Geo test… . . OOOOOO OOOO AND DAN that kid was crazy

Q: What was the worst thing about Human Geography class? Why?
A: The topic.
A: Patrick being creepy. (from a different kid)
A: Tests were ridiculous. Why? You tell me.
A: My pet peeve was when you would give out a map and people would cry for the first hour. I mean, hello, it’s a geography class.

Q: What grade do you think you deserve in Human Geography? What grade do you think you’ll get?
A: I absolutely deserve an A. I worked hard and did a darn good job. Alas, I believe I will receive a B because of some error, or miscalculation, or the American government plotting against me. How you could give me a B and sleep at night is beyond my reasoning.
A: I think I deserve an A and I know I’M REALLY CLOSE TO IT BUT I NEED LIKE 0.8 MORE!
A: A “B” please. Probably a C which would really really suck. (hint hint)

Q: What could you have done to be more successful in this class?
A: Actually put your study tips to work.
A: Made more of an effort to actually read the book and not use it for something else like painting nails.

Q: Anything else you want to tell me? Advice? Suggestions? Secrets? Now’s the time.
A: Ur sweet!
A: Don’t show Super Size Me again. I will never ever enjoy fast food for the rest of my life.
A: Maybe you should call up that guy that was hitting on you in the bookstore.
A: Try not to bore your kids next year.
A: Don’t get too attached to any of your new children. I plan on being your favorite until ’08, at which time you’ll cry and possibly transfer.
A: The tests could have been a bit less out of control on the difficulty meter.
A: Stop snitchin.
A: Maybe just enjoy the pizza next time.
A: Be chill and stop snitchin.
A: Don’t be so anul (sic) all the time.
A: Hell no! Do how you do [my last name here] live on!