The Future’s So Bright, I Have to Wear Tinted Bifocals

No Telling

I gave my students a writing prompt today that bubbled up little pockets of angst here and there. Nothing wrong with that. In eighteen year-olds, frowning end-of-the-world moods tend to mean they’re actually thinking about something other than what to post on Facebook. I call that a win. The prompt was simple: Imagine yourself five years from now. What are you doing and who is around you? Five years from today, right now this minute, who ARE you?

The results were fascinating. Oh, to be young in a world full of possibility! Strangely enough, most of the young women saw themselves married at 23. Clearly they’re all snagging older men, though, because the gentlemen in my classes overwhelmingly said no to that sort of thing. They’re all waiting until they’re thirty-ish to marry. Probably a good idea, that.

Four classes of writing students – most of whom haven’t yet chosen a major – told me they will be gainfully employed and driving nice cars. A few wise ones said they’d still be in school, graduate school, and eating ramen noodles for another few years. Most anticipate careers that involve a minimal work for maximum cash, bless their hearts. I hope it all comes true for them.

It’s important to note that not one student mentioned anything about worrying themselves bald over paying off college loans. I guess it’s a lot like giving birth – you don’t believe the negative hype until someone tells you to push.

Of course, I wrote with them. Always do. In five years I’ll be fif…forty…um…six. I’ve been going backwards for a few years now and the math’s starting to confuse me. No matter.

There’s officially a lottery here in Arkansas now, and I’ve decided I’m going to win the Powerball. That’s the first thing. A gal needs a little pocket change to make it into her declining years without eating catfood, especially if she teaches for a living. The Powerball prize need not be in the ridiculous millions, either. I’ll be happy with 25 or so.

Five years from today I might very well roll the speedometer on the 2001 Avalon past the 80,000 marker. This may take a few extra trips to Little Rock between now and then because right now I’m on the cusp of rolling it over to 40k and it’s been a while. No, I won’t buy a fancy new ride with my Powerball money. I’m confident the Avalon is good for another ten years, easy.

If I wait long enough, maybe those flying Jetson cars will finally hover the showroom floors. I’m hopeful.

The Perfect Grandson will be in second grade in five years. I figure I can either shower him with gifts and sports camp money until he graduates, or hand him 10 million for four years of college. It’s likely I’ll do both while making a geriatric pest of myself in Em’s daily life. I can multitask.

Despite being flush, I’ll probably still teach. Can’t imagine not doing that, although all that grading might eat into my book tour. I wonder if I’ll be the first one to grade essays in Oprah’s Green Room? Guess we’ll find out.

There are some other things I wrote down about doing yoga and being thin, but that made me almost as angsty as my students, so I’ll stop there.

I told my classes that imagining themselves in a future place is the only way to actually get there. Making throw-away lists and having drunken epiphanies are unproductive and sometimes lead to a life in mom and dad’s basement. Several of them nodded, so I guess they must have uncles I went to school with.

Yes, it’s a hell of a curve-ball to throw the future at them this close to a Friday night. That’s fine. Like any coach, I plan to throw a few more until they’re swinging clean from pure muscle memory. In writing and in life, that’s the way it should be.

Phone Fail

No Telling

Maybe I’m making this harder than it has to be. I’m not sure exactly how long should I read the book and fiddle with the touch screen of a new cell phone before I give up. The learning curve between the Sorry Cell Phone I had and the shiny new electronic wonder beside me now may just be a little much – like walking out of a Math for General Ed course right into Calculus. It’s not an exaggeration.

I think I’m flunking Cell Phone.

The thing intimidates me. It’s crouching here on my desk in all its Samsung Omnia sleekness, taunting me, making me feel unbelievably stupid. Oh, it takes fabulous pictures – I figured that out first thing – and even sends them to my email. I got that part down, easy. It’s just a nightmare to answer a call. In fact, I’ve not been able to pick up a call yet.

I spent three hours last night attempting to return four phone calls and I don’t think success ever happened the same way twice. There was one texting attempt, but I mistakenly texted a person who also can’t work their phone. Neither of us may ever know if that message went through.

It’s time to screw my courage to the sticking place and learn this thing. I’m putting a limit on it, though, because using a phone shouldn’t require a PHD. If I can’t figure out how to pick up and make call by this afternoon, I’ll graciously admit defeat and take the damn thing back to Verizon for something with a little less abracadabra.

Meanwhile, Em is thumb-spinning away on her new rig as if it were a natural extension of her hand. Gen-Y whippersnapper.

Happiness is an Unscheduled Hour

No Telling

Ilive less than a block from the local country club. Every afternoon as I drive home I juggle a to-do list in my head while the fellas out on the greens are putting and driving and such. More than once I’ve wondered how the hell they find world enough and time for such pursuits. Who’s taking the kids to practice/cooking dinner/making the Wal-Mart trip/grading their papers? Okay, maybe they don’t have any papers to grade. Maybe they’re all bachelors or widowers. Maybe they have hired help and lots of money to throw at them.

All I know is I’m really, really tired and they look completely relaxed. Happy.

There’s been a great deal of discussion lately concerning a research project by Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. It seems they’ve discovered that in the past thirty years or so, men have become happier than women.

Well. That’s not very hopeful.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I remember watching my mother slave over dull housework and limited choices. Did the repetition of daily thankless work and the pressure of being the perfect wife and mother make her unhappy? I thought so at the time. My fist was hovering in the air and I assumed that not only had we come a Long Way, Baby, we could have our families and launch a career as well. I figured Mom was settling for half a life.

I, on the other hand, planned to have it all. A lot of us did.

It appears this research is actually telling us about our mothers and ourselves, and it’s saying we aren’t as happy as our mamas were. Is that possible? I thought diving into the career pool was supposed to change that, and now it appears all we did was dive into the deep end with heavy Power Suits dragging us down. There’s a scary Cult of Perfection we bought into along the way, so now we have to be superhuman in our relationships, jobs, and appearance.

Aunt Bee never worried about her abs, I’ll bet.

The study cites all manner of reasons for women’s waning happiness other than our leap into the office. Interestingly, they find that all women are unhappy, no matter what their days look like. To get to the bottom of it, there’s another study of women who rate themselves as whole and happy.

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/js/2.0/video/evp/module.js?loc=dom&vid=/video/bestoftv/2009/09/27/whitfield.men.happier.women.cnn CNN Video

So how do we measure happiness? Here are the five questions from the CNN video. How do you answer them?

1. How often do you do what you like to do?
2. Do you anticipate the day with joy/dread?
3. Do you get so involved that you forget time?
4. Do you feel invigorated?
5. How often do you have an emotional high?

I’m not completely sure what makes men happier than women, but I have an inkling that they don’t worry the same way we do. Men compartmentalize such things and we tend to compound them instead. I could name fifty-eleven bits I’ve planned for or scheduled or worried about just during the time it took to write this blog post. I’ve also been multitasking by doing laundry and brewing iced tea for tomorrow. For me, writing is the answer to several of those questions up there, but I’ve managed to complicate all the fun out of it tonight.

Maybe I just need to take up golf instead.

Bookplates and the Art of Procrastination

No Telling

Bookplates should be personal. Which is why the first one I made (with a little assistance from Gustave Dore) features tomatoes. I’m fairly certain Dore wasn’t from the South, but I am. We take tomato-growing seriously down here. If you’re laughing, you’re probably from Minnesota or someplace.

Don’t fret, these are all altered images frittering their artistic lives away in the public domain. I didn’t steal them and no one’s stealing my books with something like this on the inside cover. It’s not an Evil Eye, it’s an Exasperated Eye.

Sadly, the bat story clings to me. Can’t quite shake it, so I might as well make a bookmark. That’s not a rationalization, it’s a personal philosophy. Glass half full and all that.

I give books as presents all the time. Why, I’ve even been known to give them out at Halloween when the trick-or-treater is a little too tall for my liking. I gave out fifty-cent copies of Dracula, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Frankenstein a few years back and may never live that down. The too-big-for-trick-or-treating crowd has my number now. I’d never put one of these lovely presentation plates in those, though. They don’t deserve it.

This bookplate is strictly for scholarly books on rhetorical theory. Note the poor woman’s general demeanor. Enough said.

Making these was so much fun that now I’ll be grading all day tomorrow to make up for today’s artful procrastination. If you need to lose a few hours, I suggest Wikimedia Commons and Flickr Commons for a wealth of images in the public domain.

Jitterbug or Blackberry?

No Telling

Let’s just say it’s time for a new cell phone. The groovy little phone I’m carrying around right now is older than The Perfect Grandson, woefully unattractive, and holds a charge for about half an hour. It still takes pictures (very important) but it doesn’t tend to take them well. I’d blabber on about the keypad, but I don’t text so it doesn’t matter.

Call me a geezer if you want. It’s a phone. You make calls on it. Isn’t that supposed to be the point?

This fine ride was free when I signed my life away on a contract with Alltel. Apparently Alltel doesn’t exist anymore. Was anyone else aware of this? Last month my bill was from Verizon, so I guess my waning contract is in someone else’s file cabinet now.

So now I have to shop around. Normally, shopping is a challenge I’m willing to take on, but we’re talking electronics and contracts here. It’s not like buying a new pair of pumps and a bag. So I went online to do a little comparison shopping and realized about five minutes in that I was in completely over my head.

Em jokes often about buying me a Jitterbug. If they took pictures I’d have one right now and Coolness Be Damned. Generation Y can keep their fascination with the intricate dance of electronics purchasing. The whole thing just makes me tired. My first phone was a rental rotary from Southwestern Bell. It came in two colors – black or tan – and my bill was under $8 a month. I didn’t have one of those groovy push-button wall phones until I was a married woman. And I made all my long distance calls in three feet of snow. Or something. The point is that a telephone shouldn’t be this much trouble.

Regardless, I’m past the point of no return with this sad little flip phone. It’s dented and scratched and breathing irregularly, so I feel confident it plans to give up the ghost before my contract runs out next month. Isn’t that always the way?

Help me out, folks. Simplify this process for me by giving me the skinny on good two-fer deals and cheap contract carriers. I’m going to put something on these frown lines right now before they become permanent.

snazzy image via My Confined Space

The snazzy drop-cap is a layout secret I’ll share with anyone who gives me shopping advice. Dangle that carrot, I say.

UPDATE: Here it is (but only for Blogger users):

1. Copy this code into a new blog post using the HTML mode. Change the “L” to whatever letter it should be. If you want to see exactly what it looks like beforehand, click Preview, not Compose. It will be perfect in Preview. Voila!

2. Want to do this with every single post? Copy the code, click on Settings, then Formatting. At the bottom there’s a Post Template box. Paste the code in there and it will automatically begin every post. All you need to do is change the letter in HTML mode. Double voila!

I thank you.

The Facebook Curmudgeon: Peer-Pressure Never Ends

No Telling

Okay, so after 3 1/2 months of Official Facebook Abandonment, I’m back on. I don’t have to like it, though.

I just don’t get it, really. Am I missing something? I Twitter, and that’s even beginning to make a little sense as long as I don’t follow people who tell me they just brushed their teeth. I follow a lot of editors, bloggers, and friends. I even follow Christopher Walken who’s certifiable and therefore entertaining. I’m not doing it very well myself, but it’s interesting to follow others.

Not so much with Facebook. After all those months the “friend requests” were staggering, as were the “gifts.” No one can convince me those apps are a good time. I don’t want virtual houseplants or anything that requires me to List Ten Things.

I‘ve discussed my history with Facebook before. You know, five years ago you couldn’t sign up without a .edu email address – it was nothing but college students. I signed up as a classroom experiment in which I made Facebook groups for each class I taught. For contacting students and answering questions, it worked beautifully.

Last night I logged on only to find I had over 500 friends – a scary mix of old high school buddies and recent students. It was decision time, and the youngsters lost out. I deleted over 400 students I’d accumulated over four years of the online classroom experiment. All that deleting was exhausting and gave me the terribly feeling I’d thrown out all the babies with the bathwater.

When the carnage was over, I peeked at my Friend Feed to see what was left. What remains reminds me of those old party-line phones where you picked up and heard other people’s conversations. Do I need to know Shelly lovingly prepared Spam and tater tots for dinner? Or that it’s late and Barry is tired? Is it any of my business that, without explanation, Linda’s changed her relationship status to “single”? No, no, and no.

My daughter wandered in as I sat there staring at the screen dumbfounded. Em tried, bless her heart, to convince me Facebook could be interesting. She showed me how to “lurk” or “creep” – clicking willy-nilly through and across and over layers of friends to find out the poop on everyone. It was like watching digital macrame and the end result was the same: I couldn’t make myself care. Besides, all her friends are funky and in their risk-taking years. All mine are dull and in their heart-attack years. She doesn’t see a lot of Spam-and-tater-tot updates, for example.

I did learn something important from Em’s Facebook Stalking Tutorial: if you don’t update your status, no one looks for you. Looks like I’m in the clear.

It all boils down to this: As terrible as I am at Twitter, I’m a much, much worse Facebook friend. My colleagues and closest friends are aware of my failure to socially-network properly. They forgive me in that Southern way by bless-your-hearting my digital eccentricity and trying to include me even if I never respond.

I’ll post a link to this on my Facebook status update as an act of contrition. Baby steps.

A Bad Idea that Luckily Never Quite Caught On

No Telling

“Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do her daily cleaning with a hose.” – via Foresight Culture, Popular Mechanics 1950

Does anyone remember Naugahyde? My mother had a harvest-gold couch covered in the stuff and it remained indestructible until we yard-saled it sometime in the late 70s. It was impervious to spills and stains. It stuck hermetically to the backs of our legs so that rising from the nauga-couch in the summer snatched off a layer of skin. It was almost atomic and just about the grooviest piece of furniture my mother ever vacuumed under.

I even had a Nauga-monster, which the company still makes. I’m not sure why I had one, and I’m truly confused why anyone wants one now. They’re cold and uncozy until they warm up near you and become That Doll You Peel Off of Your Face.

Wistful memories aside, I’m not ready to go nauga-retro just to ward off an errant stain or two. Besides, there’s no built-in storm-drain in my living room floor. Not that it wouldn’t be handy.

I’m also not a housewife, so there’s that. Even if I were a housewife, I’m not sure I’d feel comfortable about spraying water willy-nilly from a garden hose all over my living room. The ad-men on this little project must have imagined a bookless, magazineless, clothless world. Great in theory, but not in any house I’ve ever lived in.

I won’t even talk about what a cleaning ritual like that would do to a hair-do that took two hours once a week at the local beauty shop, and was meant to last from one visit to the next. There’s not enough Aquanet in the whole world to make that right.

Of course, she’s smiling. Since those were the days before anti-depressants became all the rage, I’m putting my money on Valium or one of its cousins as Mother’s Little Helper. Anyone want to hazard a guess?

Yearbook Yourself, or This is What Happens When She’s got a Little Time on Her Hands

No Telling

So it’s Friday night. Em’s out with her gentleman friend and I’m babysitting The Perfect Grandson who’s working some new molars through and is a bit restless. Writing anything requiring sustained concentration is out the window.

I’m kind of glad, though, because I’ve found this Yearbook Yourself site and it’s more fun than anyone has a right to have. Just upload a picture, make sure it’s lined up correctly, then try on yearbook looks. Anything from 1954 to 2000. Double the fun by adding your picture to activities – seriously, put yourself in a 1966 football squad or become a cheerleader in the 80s (scary permed hair and all).

I loved all of them, but this one (1966) really made me pause. Except for the glasses, I look exactly like my mother.

C’mon. You know you’re not doing anything important right now. Go make a yearbook picture and horrify yourself, just promise to leave a link so we can all enjoy your pain. Extra points if you put it on Facebook.

Serving up Freshman

No Telling

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
– Douglas Adams

I won’t pretend to be philosophical tonight. My eyes hurt to much from grading and commenting on my first batch of freshman comp papers. Some of them are quite good. Some could stand another rewrite. A few others make me want to hunt down their previous school districts and have a talk with someone in charge of curriculum.

This is nothing new. Freshman composition is the great levelizer. Students come from subdivisions and trailer parks, farm roads and apartments to push hopefully toward some larger imagining of themselves. They’re scared. They’re pressured. They’re free. Regardless of their previous schooling, they all need to clear the same bar by Christmas.

It’s not an easy thing to go from big ‘ol catfish to minnow in a pond where you can’t quite see the bottom. Sometimes my students write about this transition and I can tell that the act of writing it is part of the larger process of growing. I like those papers. They’re spring from a variety of topics, but all of them center around an awareness of change.

Write your way through it, I tell them, find out where you’re going and the essay will follow you there. Here, try this.

There are other papers, the ones students think they’re supposed to write about topics too distant from their experience. In high school they wrote research papers with titles like “World War II” and received glowing scores. Some only want to write about my Forbidden Topics – cloning, abortion, gay marriage, global warming, any war – because they assume all writing is a large undertaking suitable only for weighty subjects. They want to begin with answers instead of questions.

Some argue that eighteen year-olds don’t have enough personal experiences to write about. It’s true, some don’t. They will, though, and soon enough. In the meantime, we weigh out the miracle and frustration of the everyday.

As I sit here with this half-graded pile of papers, there seems to be a sort of developmental rite of passage either crossed or not. Some are ready for what comes next, others need more time to cook.

For our second paper, I’ll adjust the temperature a bit.

Whistling Past the Graveyard

No Telling

I‘m hot on the trail of a mystery of sorts. Last weekend I went to a lovely wedding in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I’m unfamiliar with the city, having only been there years ago for Advanced Placement Workshops. Pretty place – all Ozarky and such up in the hills. The University of Arkansas in Fayetteville is the Home of the Hogs, in case you’re confused. WooPigSoooey and all that.

The wedding took place just outside of town at a sweet place called Stone Chapel. It’s apparently quite the hotspot for young graduates and other locals to marry off and to each other. The quaint chapel was built ages ago by some moneyed man who wanted the perfect place for his daughter’s wedding. That’s all the story I could get from anyone, and they all seemed satisfied with that being plenty.

Don’t you hate it when someone gives you half a story?

So once I arrived, I poked around a bit. We arrived almost two hours early, so I guess you could say I poked around a lot.

Click on the website and what you won’t see is a jungle-thick acre of land somewhere off to the left of the chapel. Parking was up next to the rusted barbed-wire fence that held it tight and we had to carefully avoid hitting stones as big as lidded cake-plates to squeeze next to the fence.

No big deal. Folks who live out in the country always have an unsightly side of the house. It’s like buying fresh Christmas trees (if anyone does that anymore), they’re always a little wanky and you have to redirect all your tinsel to the good side.

The tinsel at Stone Chapel was a huge, lovely covered reception area. Tables and flowers and toddies and such – it was delightful. So delightful, in fact, that I walked halfway around the overgrown acre without paying a lick of attention to it.

But two hours is a long time, folks.

I talked to just about everyone in and out of the wedding party within an hour, so I began talking to the big security guy who stood like a mountain on the periphery of the jungled fence and watched everyone behave perfectly. Interesting fella, really, but not as interesting as what I finally noticed behind him.

That picture above is, of course, taken with my sorry cell phone camera. You can still make it out, though. There, just beyond the large security man and on the other side of the barbed wire, was a seven-foot headstone. My new friend and I tried like hell to read the name on it, but the inscription was facing the large tree. In fact, it appeared that someone had planted it there on purpose. The tree’s base had grown around the bottom of the headstone in an eternal hug.

Beyond that – and it was mighty thick in there – I saw two more headstones just as tall. That little acre was an old cemetery, right there in the middle of everyone’s wedding and a stone’s toss from the reception toddies.

Now, I wasn’t dressed for giving this acre a proper going-over. Not to mention the barbed-wire business and that friendly but no-nonsense security fella. I don’t worry about my family, they’re used to my little oddnesses, but I didn’t want anyone bailing me out of the pokey on my cousin’s special day.

With about forty-five minutes until marital blast-off, I began stalking the perimeter. Those big rocks we’d avoided when parking? They were ancient unmarked gravestones, worn lopsided and pitted by weather. We had parked, if you can believe it, up against a wall of overhanging limbs sheltering a sort of mini-burial place. The growth was so thick that it took me quite some time to make out ornate iron fencing that marked off a 10′ by 20′ rectangle within the larger acre. I counted nine small headstones, but there could have been more.

A children’s plot. The rusted iron fencing looked for all the world like a discarded crib.

I gathered myself together and went back to my people, stood and sat when I should, smiled for photos, and cried just like everyone else when the young couple made promises to one another. Weddings are hopeful events, and this one was more hopeful than most. Afterward, we all ate and danced and admired the newlyweds.

The seven-foot headstone watched the whole reception from behind the security guard, as I’m sure it does almost every weekend there at Stone Chapel. Wedding after wedding, and no one the wiser.

Note: I’ve contacted the Washington County Genealogical Society and they have no record of the cemetery. No one knew it was there. But they’re looking at it now, and should get back to me soon to tell me the other half of the story.